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Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork
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Edited by George W Stocking, Jr.
Anthropology
Observers Observed
Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork
Edited by George Stocking, Jr.
"This volume focuses on ethnographic fieldwork, a keystone of cultural anthropology that is at once a unique means of collecting data (participant observation is
often spoken of as an 'anthropological' method) and a crucial rite of passage that
transforms novices into professionals . . . . The collection as a whole is of high
quality, presenting valuable information and provocative analyses. For an anthropologist, the essays by historians offer fresh perspectives that differentiate this
book from others on fieldwork."-May Ebihara, American Scientist
"Observers Observed will be interesting reading for newer fieldworkers who want
to compare their experiences with those of some of the masters. It will also be useful in universities for courses in both the history of anthropology and anthropology research methods. Outside anthropology, especially in sociology, it can be
read with benefit by those curious about how anthropologists come by their global
perspective."-Paul A. Erickson, International Journal of Comparative Sociology
"Overall the essays represent a unique and much-needed kind of scholarship
which has joint appeal to both anthropologists and historians."
-Aram Yengoyan, Comparative Studies in Society and History
Other titles in the series
HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Edited by George W. Stocking, Jr.
Volume 2, Functionalism Historicized
Essays on British S.ocial Anthropology
Volume 3, Objects and Others
Essays on Museums and Material Culture
Volume 4, Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and Others
Essays on Culture and Personality
Volume 5, Bones, Bodies, Behavior
Essays on Biological Anthropology
Volume 6, Romantic Motives
Essays on Anthropological Sensibility
Volume 7, Colonial Situations
Essays on the Contextualization of Ethnographic Knowledge
The University of Wisconsin Press

114 North Murray Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53715
slN 10-12991-109141514-5
9 780299 094546
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11
Observers Observed
EDITOR
George W. Stocking, Jr.
Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
EDITORIAL BOARD
Talal Asad
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Hull
James Boon
Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
James Clifford
Board of Studies in the History of Consciousness,
University of California, Santa Cruz
Donna Haraway
Board of Studies in the History of Consciousness,
University of California, Santa Cruz
Curtis Hinsley
Department of History, Colgate University
Dell Hymes
Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
Henrika Kuklick
Department of History and Sociology of Science,
University of Pennsylvania
Bruce Trigger
Department of Anthropology, McGill University
Observers Observed
ESSAYS ON
ETHNOORAPHIC FIELDWORK
Edited by
George W. Stocking,
Jr.
Volume 1
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THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS
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The University of Wisconsin Press

114 North Murray Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53715
3 Henrietta Street
London WC2E 8LU, England
Copyright 1983
The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
All rights reserved
10
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:
Observers observed.
(History of anthropology; v. I)
Includes bibliographies and index
1. Ethnology-Field work-Addresses, essays, lectures.
2. Participant observation-Addresses, essays, lectures.
3. Ethnology-History-Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Stocking, George W., 1928. II. Series.
GN346.027 1983
306'.0723
83-47771
ISBN 0-299-09450-2
ISBN 0-299-09454-5 (pbk.)
Contents
HISTORY OF ANTHROPOLOGY: WHENCE/WHITHER
3
"THE VALUE OF A PERSON LIEs IN His HERZENSBILDUNG":
FRANZ BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY,
1883-1884
Douglas Cole
13
ETHNOGRAPHIC CHARISMA AND ScIENTIFIC ROUTINE:
CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST,
1879-1893
Curtis Hinsley
53
THE ETHNOGRAPHER's MAGIC: FIELDWORK IN
BRITISH ANTHROPOLOGY FROM TYLOR TO MALINOWSKI
George W. Stocking, Jr.
70
POWER AND DIALOGUE IN ETHNOGRAPHY:
MARCEL GRIAULE's INITIATION
James Clifford
121
LEARNING ABOUT CULTURE: RECONSTRUCTION, PARTICIPATION,
1934-1954
Homer G. Barnett
ADMINISTRATION,
157
FOLLOWING DEACON: THE PROBLEM OF
ETHNOGRAPHIC REANALYSIS,
Joan Larcom
175
1926-1981
vi
CONTENTS
"FACTS ARE A WoRD OF Goo": AN EssAY REVIEW
Paul Rabinow
196
MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES
THE DAINTY AND THE HUNGRY MAN: LITERATURE AND
ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE WoRK OF EDWARD SAPIR
Richard Handler
208
INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS
233
INDEX
235
Observers Observed
Whence/Whither
At a time when bookshelves bulge with journals ever-more-costly and everless-often read, the launching of a new volume-series demands a brief selfexplaining introduction. What is the audience whose unserved needs we address? What is the subject of our discourse? How do we intend to pursue it?
And why do we begin with a particular aspect of it?
Although there has been occasional interest in the history of anthropology
throughout the century since the emergence of the modern academic discipline, a more systematic concern may be traced to the Conference on the
History of Anthropology stimulated by A. I. Hallowell and sponsored by the
Social Science Research Council in 1962 (cf. Hymes 1962). Two decades
later, what was once for the most part the episodic effort of reminiscent elder
anthropologists or roving intellectual historians has become something approximating a recognized research specialization. The History of Anthropology:
A Research Bibliography includes 2,439 titles culled from over 5,000 collected
by its editors (Kemper & Phinney 1977), and for the past decade each biannual issue of the History of Anthropology Newsletter has recorded a substantial
number of articles, doctoral dissertations, and books by scholars who think
of themselves as historians of anthropology (Stocking, ed. 1973-).
The impetus for this development has come from both history and anthropology. Historians have no doubt been impelled in part by the inherent
expansionism of a profession whose rapidly multiplying apprentices must find
still unplowed fields for their research. But historical interest is also motivated by more general professional and social concerns centering on issues of
knowledge and power. The long-run trend towards the professionalization of
intellectual life within academic disciplines often lately pervaded by a sense
of crisis has made these disciplines themselves seem historically problematic;
issues of racial and ethnic relations in the decolonizing world have turned
historians' attention to the ideology of race and culture (cf. Hinsley 1981).
Although doubtless variously motivated, the heightened retrospective interest of anthropologists reflects the special sense of disciplinary crisis that
has developed since about 1960. With the withdrawal of the umbrella of
European power that long protected their entry into the colonial field, anthropologists found it increasingly difficult to gain access to (as well as ethically more problematic to study) the non-European "oth~rs" who had traditionally excited the anthropological imagination-and who seemed finally
about to realize, through cultural change, the long-trumpeted anthropological prediction of the "vanishing primitive." Some envisioned "the end of
anthropology" along with its traditional subject matter (cf. Worsley 1970).
Some wondered whether anthropology was a reversible and universal form of
knowledge or merely the way Europeans had explained to themselves the
"others" encountered during the centuries-long period of European overseas
expansion (Stocking 1982b:419). Still others proposed the "reinvention" of
the discipline. Calling into question its institutionalization within the academy, turning for the first time in its history toward Marxist and feminist
theory, they advocated a more "reflexive" study of social groups within EuroAmerican societies, and an active political involvement on behalf of its subjects (Hymes, ed. 1973). Whether it is being reinvented, or simply being
carried along by institutional inertia, anthropology in the early 1980s continues to face profound issues of disciplinary identity (Hoebel, ed. 1982). The
development of self-study by post-colonial "native anthropologists" raises new
ethical and methodological problems; reflexive study in the metropolis contributes to the centrifugal proliferation of "adjectival anthropologies" without
providing a unifying substantive focus; epistemological and ethical doubts
have weakened methodological resolution without yet resolving the problematic character of fieldwork method; the questioning of old concepts and the
legitimation of new theoretical alternatives has not established the basis for
a new integrative orientation; and despite a growing concern with increasing
non-academic employment options for its surplus doctorates, the discipline
remains essentially an academic one.
In this context, some anthropologists have become increasingly conscious
of the historical character of their discipline. Not only are the problems and
the data of anthropology once again seen to be essentially historical after a
half-century of predominantly synchronic emphases, but anthropology itself
is increasingly viewed as an historical phenomenon. In order to understand
their present predicament and to find and/or to legitimate approaches that
might lead them out of it, a number of anthropologists have turned to the
history of anthropology (e.g., Auge 1979; Crick 1976; Harris 1968).
The founding of History of Anthropology (hereafter, HOA) is an outcome
of this double disciplinary impulse. Until now, there has been no arena in
which both anthropologists and historians might pursue historical problems
of common concern before an informed and interested audience. Articles on
various aspects of the history of anthropology have been scattered hither and
yon, appearing now and then in anthropological journals little read by historians, but as often in historical journals scarcely seen by anthropologists.
HOA will attempt to provide a single central forum for their mutual discourse.
The duality of our audience is not the only problematic issue suggested by
our title. Despite anthropology's century as an academic discipline, its definition is in some respects more problematic today than at the time of its early
institutionalization. Depending on national tradition, sub-disciplinary identification, and theoretical orientation, its external and internal boundary relations vary considerably (cf. Hannerz, ed. 1983; Diamond, ed. 1980). The
embracive ("four-field") conception of anthropology has been most characteristic of the American and certain phases of the British tradition. On the
European continent the term long referred primarily to the study of "man" as
a physical being; and there are those in the United States today who would
separate "socio-cultural" anthropology as sharply from biological anthropology as, for example, from psychology or economics.
One might resolve the issue by defining a fundamental problem-orientation
underlying the historical diversity of disciplinary definition: the history we
encompass is that of "the systematic study of human unity-in-diversity." Such
a formula allows a place not only for biological anthropology (e.g., Haraway
1978), archeology (e.g., Trigger 1980), anthropological linguistics (e.g.,
Hymes, ed. 1974), and socio-cultural anthropology (e.g., Boon 1983), but
for such historical or national variants as "ethnology" and volkskurule, as well
as the "anthropological" aspects of psychology, aesthetics, economics, etc. It
allows us also to consider as historically problematic the processes by which
certain approaches to or aspects of human diversity are (or are not} incorporated into such systematic study (cf. Kuklick 1980)-for example, the
changing fate of Marxist or feminist perspectives on social organization (e.g.,
Rosaldo & Lamphere, eds. 1974), or the exclusion of missionary ethnography in favor of "scientific" fieldwork (cf. Clifford 1982).
Nevertheless our formula-which is itself full of problematic conceptstends still to suggest an orientation, however flexible, toward the history of
a "discipline." No doubt much of our historiography will be thus construedor constrained. But in principle we recognize no sharp borders surrounding
the "discipline" of anthropology. It is not merely a matter of including western "folk anthropology" as part of the historical background from which "scientific anthropology" emerged (cf. Hallowell 1965). It is also one of recognizing that in every period the "systematic study of human unity-in-diversity"
is itself constrained-some might say systematically structured-by the ongoing and cumulative historical experience of encounters and comprehensions between Europeans and "others." These comprehensions articulate closely
with ideologies of European self-knowledge-as the evolutionary equation of

savage/madman/peasant/child/woman suggests-and the often bloodily expropriative nature of these encounters gives them a special weighting of moral
concern. The history of anthropology is thus the history of a "discipline"
whose enmeshment in world-historical structures and processes especially
compels attention.
From the broadest point of view, then, the history of anthropology we
propose to encompass is that of the systematic study of human unity-in-diversity,
against the background of historical experience and cultural assumption that
has provoked and constrained it, and which it in tum has conditioned.
The launching of HOA takes place in the context of a more general rapprochement between the two inquiries. For just as anthropologists lately have
turned to history, many historians (quite aside from the interest in the history
of disciplines) have turned recently to anthropology for conceptual and
methodological orientations (Gaunt 1982). Despite this rapprochement, and
an underlying substantive and epistemological kinship, there nevertheless
tend to be differences in the approaches that anthropologists and historians
take to the history of anthropology. To borrow categories used elsewhere some
years ago to describe motivation and style in historical inquiry, anthropologists are more likely to be "presentist" and historians more "historicist" in
treating the history of issues currently debated within anthropology (Stocking 1965; cf. Stocking 1982a). To put the matter another way, anthropologists are more likely to be committed to one side or another, and historians
to be (relatively) disinterested observers, and the histories they write are
likely to reflect this fact. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages.
If historians are less likely to be blinkered by theoretical bias, they are also
more likely to suffer from a lack of technical sophistication and relevance;
and if an anthropologist's commitment may inhibit understanding of the "losing" side, it can also illuminate issues that remain below the threshold of a
more disinterested concern.
Drawing its editorial board from both disciplines, HOA will be receptive
to a variety of historical and anthropological points of view. We favor studies
grounded in concrete historical research, but we hope to rise well above
anecdotal antiquarianism to contribute to the critical understanding of general issues of serious current anthropological concern. We hope to encourage
the development of a disciplinary historiography that is both historically sophisticated and anthropologically knowledgeable.
It should be emphasized that we are not proposing a division in which
anthropology provides subject matter and history methodological orientation. In this respect the history of anthropology differs significantly from that
of certain other inquiries. For the historian of physics, the methods and con-
cepts of that discipline do perhaps have relevance only as subject matter. For
the historian of anthropology, they are not only the object of inquiry, but
may provide also a means h which it is pursued. As Hallowell argued several
decades ago, the history of anthropology should be approached as "an anthropological problem" (Hallowell 1965).
The history of anthropology, however, is not one but many such problems,
each with many facets, which may be approached in a variety of particular
ways. And each problem may engage not only particular groups of anthropologists and historians, but also sociologists of science and literary historians, as well as others with specific or general interests in the human sciences.
With these constraints in mind, HOA has adopted a format of periodic booklength volumes organized around particular themes announced and developed in advance. In addition to substantive articles of varying length, documentary materials, personal reminiscences, critical essays, and essay reviews
relating to the volume theme, each volume of HOA will include one or more
"miscellaneous studies," in order to allow a place for high-quality research
outside our chosen topics. Should the muses of our authors prove more generally resistant to coordination, we will not hesitate to publish an occasional
miscellaneous volume. In this manner, we hope to bring together the best
work being produced, and to stimulate research which, if it does not find a
place in HOA, may enrich the pages of other journals that will retain an
interest in the history of anthropology.
As theme for the inaugural volume of HOA, we have focussed on the development of ethnographic fieldwork in socio-cultural anthropology. Both for
practitioners and outsiders, a distinguishing feature of modem anthropology
is the commitment to fieldwork by "participant-observation." Entering as a
stranger into a small and culturally alien community, the investigator becomes for a time and in a way part of its system of face-to-face relationships,
so that the data collected in some sense reflect the native's own point of view.
This style of inquiry is much more than a mode of data-gathering widely
(although by no means universally) adopted in a particular discipline of the
human sciences. At once setting anthropology apart from other such inquiries and linking it to a broader European tradition of participatory cultural
exoticism, it is the basis for a most unlikely image of the academic intellectual: "the anthropologist as hero" (Sontag 1966). It is a kind of shared ar-.
chetypical experience that informs, if it does not generate, a system of generalized methodological values or disciplinary ideology: the value placed on
fieldwork itself as the basic constituting experience not only of anthropological knowledge but of anthropologists; the value placed on a holistic approach to the cultures (or societies) that are the subject of this form of knowledge; the value placed on the equal valuation of all such entities; and the
value placed on their uniquely privileged role in the constitution of anthropological theory (Stocking 1982b; cf. Mandelbaum 1982). It has, in short,
been the legitimizing basis for anthropology's claim to special cognitive authority (cf. Clifford 1983).
During the decades of socio-cultural anthropology's "classical period"roughly 1925 to 1960 (cf. Stocking 1978)-fieldwork evoked relatively little
systematic questioning or analysis (Nash & Wintrob 1972). Certain aspects
of it were subject to a degree of formal elaboration that enabled them to be
taught as technical skills (Epstein, ed. 1967). For the most part, however,
fieldwork training was a matter of learning by doing, and this less in the
tradition of apprenticeship than of "sink-or-swim." There was a certain amount
of formal scholarly discussion of certain methodological issues, but there is
little in the published record to suggest a serious consideration of the funda-.
mental epistemological, psychological, or ethical issues involved in research
where the investigator was expected-if archetype were to be realized-to
become rather intimately involved in the processes he or she was studying.
As befits the central methodological rite in a discipline whose national communities continued into the 1950s to resemble the face-to-face gemeinschaften
they archetypically studied, fieldwork was enacted more than it was analyzed;
part of the community's oral tradition, it was the subject of considerable
mythic elaboration.
By 1960, this situation had begun to change. To some extent this may
have been the result of the growth of anthropology itself. Especially in the
United States, where there were substantial numbers of undergraduates taking anthropology courses, the community became large enough to provide a
publishing market; and given its central role in the anthropological mystique, the field experience was bound eventually to become a marketable
commodity. Field training, however, continued for the most part to be extremely informal, and the interest of publishers tended to lag behind a changing disciplinary consciousness, which by 1960 was beginning to respond to
the changing circumstances of ethnographic inquiry in the era of decolonization. In that context, the publication of certain books did play a role in
the emergence of the new consciousness-most notably Malinowski's Diary
in the Strict Sense of the Term (1967). Suddenly there seemed to have been
uncovered a long-repressed Conradian horror-what the culture-hero of the
fieldwork myth had "actually" been feeling during his long and presumably
empathetic immersion in the Trobriand gemeinschaft. Longing for white civilization and for white womanhood, he had relieved his frustration with outpourings of aggression against the "niggers" who surrounded him. In a political context in which anthropologists were being attacked for indirect or
active complicity in the defense of colonial power (cf. Asad, ed. 1973), and
l'Ven, despite the discipline's half-century critique of racial ideology, as themselves racialist, Malinowski's "niggers" were profoundly disturbing indeed.
Anthropologists have yet to come to terms with all the implications of
Malinowski's diaries. But the years since 1967 have seen a considerable body
of literature on the fieldwork process. The heightened consciousness of its
problematic character has produced numerous discussions of the epistemological, methodological, psychological, ethical, and political implications of
fieldwork, as well as a number of autobiographical accounts of varying length
(cf. Agar 1980). Increasingly, ethnographies are accompanied by or even
presented in the form of accounts of the fieldwork that produced them (cf.
Cesara 1982). But while historians of the discipline have approached aspects
of its development, there is as yet no general historical account of the modern anthropological fieldwork tradition. It is in this context that we have
chosen our theme and subtitle for the first volume of HOA: "Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork."
Few if any themes in the history of anthropology can be systematically explored within the confines of a single 200-page volume of essays written by
authors whose motivating interests are in fact quite varied. Since one of our
purposes is to provoke further research, it may be useful to reflect briefly on
some of the limitations of the history we have sketched. Granting that our
choice of episodes was heavily conditioned by the circumstances of current
work-in-progress, one can of course imagine a multitude of particular alternatives. We might have begun with Lewis Henry Morgan, whose kinshipterminology questionnaires and trans-Mississippi expeditions of the late 1850s
were perhaps the earliest attempts systematically to collect data bearing on a
specific ethnological problem; our failure even to mention Margaret Mead
must surely strike many readers as anomalous.
The issue is perhaps better approached, however, in terms of certain limitations of the overall picture we have conveyed. Neglecting the development of fieldwork traditions in other areas of anthropology, we have shut off
a wide range of reflective insights that might have been offered by contrast
ing, for instance, the modalities of archeological fieldwork with those of ethnography. Although we have included material from three major national
ethnographic traditions, we have only touched upon their interaction, and
comparisons between them have been for the most part implicit and juxtapositional (cf. Urry n.d. ). More seriously, perhaps, our episodic approach has
significantly distorted the presentation of the American ethnographic tradition. Skipping from Cushing in the Southwest and Boas in Baffinland forward to Barnett's disillusionment with summertime trait surveys, we have in
fact omitted what many would consider the most characteristic manifestation
10
of Boasian ethnography: the style that produced Boas' "five-foot shelf" of

Kwakuitl texts. Building on the traditions of European humanistic scholarship, particularly on linguistic and folklore study, this approach saw ethnography as the construction of a body of textual material directly expressive of
the native mind, produced with the active and acknowledged assistance of
native ethnographic intermediaries like George Hunt. The contrast with the
British tradition is by no means absolute-Hocart, too, aspired to construct
his ethnographies in these terms. But if we characterize different ethnographic modes in terms of the forms of data that they privilege (such as
artifactual, textual, and behavioral), the contrast between the classic Boa;sian and Malinowskian modes is clear enough.
It is primarily the latter that undergirds the presently dominant disciplinary ideology; and it could be argued that, after all, our history has been
structured by a corresponding disciplinary myth-history of fieldwork. By focussing on developments since 1880, we have encouraged a de facto separation of modem ethnography from the long preceding experience of contact
between Europeans and "others." Furthermore, we have only briefly treated
what was lost {as well as gained) with the emergence of a scientistic academic
anthropology. At the same time, we have perhaps sustained a somewhat
backward-looking romantic image of the academic ethnographer: all our anthropologists are European, and if they did not all work alone, the "others"
that they studied were for the most part inhabitants of geographically distant
precincts of cultural exoticism. There is little reflection of the historical roots
of a more reflexive ethnography-nothing on European folklore or volkskunde, nothing on anthropological research in more complex societies. In
short, by limiting ourselves to the last century, by emphasizing its earlier
phases, by orienting ourselves toward academic anthropology, and by focussing on the critical role of individuals who figure prominently in the disciplinary myth, we have to some extent perpetuated a picture which, although
presented in more concretely historical terms, is in basic outline rather conventional.
But though this is in some ways a limitation, we make no apology for it.
If we focus on the familiar, it is our intention to defamiliarize it. To do this
need not always require recomposition from scratch. It may be a matter of
directing a brighter, fuller light on figures whose proportions have been distorted and whose surroundings have been cast into shadow-or of trying to
set their stereotyped postures once more in motion. No doubt other standpoints might have been adopted, other lamps held, other perspectives revealed. For anthropologists (prospective, certified, retired, or manque) fieldwork is an endlessly engaging topic, which will surely appear again in HOA
In the meantime, we will try to remain open to approaches that go beyond
11
explicit or implicit disciplinary definitions, in the hope that by defamiliarizing the past, we may perhaps help to open up the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Aside from the editor, the editorial board, the contributors, and the production staff of the University of Wisconsin Press, several other individuals and
organizations facilitated the preparation of this volume. The Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., provided a grant to underwrite editorial expenses. The staffs of the University of Chicago Department
of Anthropology and of the Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of the
History of Science and Medicine (especially Kathryn Barnes and Elizabeth
Bitoy) provided necessary support. Kevin Mutchler served as editorial assistant, and Raymond Fogelson was ever-ready with helpful editorial advice. Our
thanks to them all.
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York.
Asad, T., ed. 1973. Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London.
Auge, M. 1974. The anthropological circle: Symbol, function, history. Trans. M. Thom.
Cambridge (1982).
Roon, J. 1983. Other tribes, other scribes: Symbolic anthropology in the comparative study
of cultures, histories, religions, and texts. Cambridge.
Cesara, M. (K. Poewe). 1982. Reflections of a woman anthropologist. New York.
Clifford, J. 1982. Person and myth: Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian world. Berkeley.
- - - . 1983. On ethnographic authority. Representations. 1 (2).
Crick, M. 1976. Explorations in language and meaning: Towards a semantic anthropology.
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Diamond, S., ed. 1980. Anthropology: Ancestors and heirs. The Hague.
Epstein, A., ed. 1967. The craft of social anthropology. London.
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Hannerz, U., ed. 1983. The shaping of national anthropologies. Ethnos 47.
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"THE VALUE OF A PERSON

LIES IN HIS
HERZENSBILDUNG"
Franz Boas' Baffin Island
Letter--Diary, 1883-1884
DOUGLAS COLE
When Franz Boas was twenty-five years old, he travelled to Baffin Island to
undertake anthropological and geographical research among the Eskimo. In
view of his later eminence as reigning patriarch of American anthropology
during the first third of the twentieth century, the letter-diaries that he kept
during his erstlingsreise (Boas 1894:97) have a special interest for the history
of the discipline.
Boas had secured his doctorate from Kiel University in the summer of
1881. Although his dissertation had been in physics, he had already chosen
one of his minor fields, geography, as his future speciality. After pursuing for
n time certain problems of the psychophysics of sense perception suggested
hy his doctoral studies, he began to focus his interests on the relationship
between people and their natural environment. By April 1882, during the
year of his required military service, he had begun planning "an investigation
11f the dependence of contemporary Eskimo migrations upon the physical
rdationships and forms of their land" (BPP: FB/A. Jacobi 4/10/82; cf. Kluckhohn & Prufer 1959, Stocking 1968).
Douglas Cole is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. He has

puhlished on the history of Canada and its art, including From Desolation to Splendour:
( :haTl,l(ing Perceptions of the British Columbia Landscape, and on the history of anthropology. He is currently finishing a book on museums and Northwest Coast anthropological collecting, and researching a study of Franz Boas' early years.
13
14
DouoLAs CoLE
The reason for selecting the Eskimo (or Inuit) is not apparent at first
glance. Boas seems to have felt that their environmental dependence was the
most simple case with which to begin, though the paucity of information
available upon the region and its natives weighed against the advantages of
apparent simplicity. Perhaps the choice was a quite personal one, its roots
lying far back in Boas' youth. As early as 1870, when he was but a boy of
twelve, he wrote to his sister of undertaking an expedition to the north or
south pole after completing university (BFP: FB!f. Boas 12/3170). The probability that polar exploration was a long-standing idea and not a passing
boyhood fantasy receives support from the course he took in 1878-79 at
Bonn on the geography and research of polar areas.
Having decided to study the Inuit and their environment, Boas set about
his preparations for an expedition. He moved to Berlin, where, among other
things, he studied meteorological, astronomical, and magnetic observation
with W J. Forster of the Berlin Planetarium and anthropological measurement with Rudolf Virchow, as well as cartographic and topographical drawing. He also worked at both the Inuit and Danish languages, consulted Heymann Steinthal on linguistic points, examined the Arctic collections at the
Berlin museum under the eye of Adolf Bastian, and learned photography.
Through his developing Berlin acquaintances Boas was able also to organize
the practical matters of launching the expedition. Bastian put him in touch
with Georg van Neumayer, chairman of the German Polar Commission, which
at that time was supporting scientific parties at Baffin and South Georgia
islands. Neumayer promised transportation to Baffin Island with the Commission's ship and generously allowed Boas to have his pick of the returning
station's instruments and supplies. Boas persuaded the editors of the Berliner
Tageblatt to advance 3,000 marks against fifteen promised articles.
Much remained to be done, but the means for the expedition and its
planned outline were clear. He would travel to Baffin Island's Cumberland
Sound with the Germania, a ship built in 1869 for Arctic use. She would
take him deep into Cumberland Sound to Kingawa, where Dr. Wilhelm Giese's
scientific party had spent the International Polar Year of 1882-83. Should
the Scottish station at Kikkerton Island seem more favorable as a base than
the Kingawa hut, Boas had a letter from Crawford Noble, its Aberdeen owner,
asking the resident master for his cooperation. Boas planned to take with
him an assistant and a servant. Although Lieutenant von den Goltz, Neumayer's recommendation as assistant, backed out at the last moment, servant
Wilhelm Weike, who had been in the Boas family service, remained. With
the advice of old Arctic hands, Boas secured in Hamburg a large stock of
provisions, guns, ammunition and trade goods, a thirteen-foot dinghy intended for the interior lakes, and a small steel sled.
His research strategy was developed from his rapid mastery of Arctic lit-
BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY
15
t'rature and honed by several contributions that he made to it during his

preparatory year. The most important article, ostensibly about the homeland
of the Netsilik Eskimo, partly described and partly postulated extensive routes
of trade and travel between Inuit groups of the central and eastern Arctic
(Boas 1883: 223-33). According to the article, these well-established routes
t'Xtcnded from Ugulik, a settlement at the western tip of King William Isl1111J, eastward through lglulik on Fury and Hecla Strait, and from there in
two directions on Baffin Island-to Pond Inlet at the northern end, and
down along the western coast, connecting eastwards to Cumberland Sound.
Boas fitted these interests and postulates into a plan for a one-year inves1igation based at Cumberland Sound. Aside from cartographic and meteorological research, his intention was to study Eskimo migration, hunting areas,
I rndc routes, and the relationships of one group to another. He would travel
In the summer and fall of 1883 to Lake Kennedy (Lake Nettilling), an inland
Mlll'et of fresh water, and from there attempt to reach the west coast of Baffin
IMland and follow it north to lglulik. Returning to winter in Cumberland
Sound, he would "collect ethnographic material and make a thorough study
of the language, customs and habits of the Eskimo" (BFP: "Als Ausgangspunkt" n.d. ). In the spring he would return to lglulik and then, by the route
postulated in his article, travel north to Pond Inlet, perhaps yet farther north
Ill Devon Island. He would return to Cumberland Sound in July along the
I )av is Strait, and sail home in the fall aboard a whaler.
This ambitious itinerary and the tenacity to which Boas held to a trip to
I he west coast, despite overwhelming setbacks, indicates that he was exceedingly intent upon demonstrating that portion of the routes he had set out in
his Netsilik article. There was probably more to it, too. An overland trip
westward from Cumberland Sound would bring him to one of the largest
unexplored regions of the Arctic and onto an apparently easy route north to
h~lulik, Pond Inlet, and beyond. It would be a significant piece of geographic
discovery.
Privately, Boas antil;:ipated a different ending to his expedition. Knowing
I hat vessels traded along Davis Strait, he hoped to be picked up by an Amerlrnn whaler. The reasons behind this desire to visit America were partly
professional: for a number of reasons, including the recent upsurge of antiSemitism, he was not convinced that his future lay in Germany. Another
motive was personal and concerned Miss Marie Krackowizer.
Marie Krackowizer was the daughter of Dr. Ernst Krackowizer, an Austrian
Forty-Eighter who became a prominent New York doctor before his death in
1875. The Krackowizers were close friends of another New York physician
anJ German Forty-Eighter, Abraham Jacobi, who was Boas' uncle by marriage. When, in the summer of 1881, the Krackowizers and Jacobi holidayed
logether in the Harz mountains of Germany, they were joined by Boas, who
16
DouGLAS CoLE
had just finished sitting his doctoral exams at Kiel. He had only turned twentythree, and Marie was not quite twenty. For three days-they were almost constantly together, walking in the park at Wemigerode, looking down from the
cliff of the Regenstein. They had an unforgettable early morning in the wild
and picturesque Bodethal before all left for the Boas home in Minden, where
Franz and Marie had two more days together. Although the Krackowizers
settled temporarily in Stuttgart, the relationship lay dormant until Boas attended the Geographical Congress at Frankfurt in the spring of 1883 and
feigned an appointment in Stuttgart as an excuse to call upon Marie. That
April first afternoon, a beautiful spring Sunday, they stood under the old
Schiller Oak "and told one another everything except what we really thought"
(BFP: FB/MK 6/24/83). The omission was removed by a flurry of letters at
the end of May. Less than three weeks before his departure for Baffin Island,
they were quietly engaged. Her farewell letter, read as the Germania sailed
down the Elbe, ended with "Vorwiirts! lch warte dir!"-"Onward, I wait for
you!" (BFP: MK/FB 6/19/83). Vorwiirts became a word repeated time and
again by Boas to himself as he pursued his labors in the lonely barrens of
Baffin Island.
The expedition meant a difficult separation for two such recently declared
lovers. For twelve or more months any communication between them would
be impossible. In the circumstances, they both kept diaries of unpostable
letters. What matter if they could not be answered or even read for months?
These circumstances make Boas' letter-diary a very peculiar document. In
a sense it is a single, 500-page letter composed over a fifteen-month period.
Much of it is an outpouring of affection, an extended love letter, in which
amorous effusions often overwhelm description of his field activities. The
letter-diary served purposes which his simpler field journal could not. Like a
letter, it provided an escape from present circumstances into indirect communication with someone dear and far away. Like a diary, it was a personal
document where he could relieve himself of otherwise contained emotionslove, frustration, joy and despair. Under especially trying conditions, it
sometimes ceased even to be a personal document and merely duplicated the
sparse entries of his daily field journal. At other times, there are gaps of days,
even longer, invariably followed by apologies and catch-up reports. While
not a perfect way to reconstruct Boas' first field experience, it does allow
considerable insight into his soul and travail.
The letter-diary is a very hard document to read. lglus and tepiks possessed
no writing desks and the letter diary went with him over the estimated 3,000
or so miles he travelled; by his own admission to Marie, his handwriting was
often little more than "chicken-scratches" (Kracke!filise-letter-diary 11/5/
83). The extant document is not even "original" for the most part, but a
17
rnrlion copy made on perforated 17.5 by 8. 5 cm notepads. The original was

mostly in pencil (there was a problem of keeping ink liquid) and the carbon
IN often smudged. Its legibility was a test even for the late Helene Boas Yampolsky, daughter of Boas, whose work in creating a translation cannot be
praised too highly. While relying very much upon this translation, I have
Mllcceeded in filling some of her gaps and have made changes where I thought
11 hetter reading possible.
The poor legibility of the text and the necessity of turning German scribbled
In the field into acceptable English make textual integrity impossible. Inuit
1wrsonal names are given as accurate a rendering as possible, using BaffinI .imcl (Boas 1885) when they are mentioned there, but more often relying
upon the most common or most clear form of the Boas manuscripts. Geo11ruphical names have been standardized, except Kikkerton and Kingawa, to
Boas' list in Baffin-Land (90-94). Several other terms (e.g., Doctora'dluk)
lrnvc also been regularized-although it is important to note that Boas later
Insisted on the methodological significance of such "alternating" renditions
( 1889). As reproduced here, the letter-diary is rather severely abridged. The
rnrly shipboard sections, which occupy almost a third of the original manuMnipt, are almost entirely omitted; in all, the text is cut to about one quarter
of the original. What remains, however, will perhaps convey the essence of
Boas' ethnographic initiation.
IThe letter-diary opens three days after the Germania sailed from Hamburg
on June 20, as it was passing from the Elbe into the North Sea. "My best
hdoved! Today I am beginning to write my diary to you and must tell you
first of all how much I love you." Boas describes life on board, his cramped
nnJ smelly cabin, how he tried to give Wilhelm lessons in English ("He has
11 terribly thick head. Things don't penetrate very readily"), and how, by July
5, life had become "very monotonous." On his birthday, July 9, when the
ship passed Greenland's Cape Farewell into the Arctic Ocean, he was so
Hl'asick that only in the afternoon could he even look at the letters and
presents Weike had for him. Two days later, he ruminated on the purpose of
the trip: "It is funny how everybody thinks I am making this trip for fame
anJ glory. Certainly they do not know me and I would have a poor opinion
'1f myself if that was a goal for which I put in work and effort. You know that
I strive for a higher thing and that this trip is only a means to that goal. I
suppose it is true that I want external recognition for my achievements, but
only in so far as I wish to be known as a man who will carry out his ideas and
act upon them. That is the only kind of recognition I can think of. Empty
glory means nothing to me."
18
DouGLAS CoLE
DAVJs
BAFFIN
Cumberland Sound and Davis Strait on the east side of Baffin Island.
On July 15, the ship was in sight of Cape Mercy, the outermost point of
the Cumberland Peninsula. Further progress, however, was impossible: "All
we can see, lookmg landwards, is a desert of ice, shoal after shoal, field upon
field, broken only by an occasional iceberg." Already he was having to revise
his plans since it was becoming doubtful that they could break into the Sound
before the middle of August. By July 27 he had given up his plan for a fall
trip to lglulik, and by August 7, Boas worried that the whole project might
have to be abandoned: "How will my things get to Kikkerton and what shall
I do in the fall if we get to land too late? And if we never get there, what
then? I should be very sorry for the unfortunate north expedition" (the men
at the German Polar Station). "And what a great disappointment it would
be for me! But I will hope for the best. I have not been able to sleep for
several nights for worry about these matters and I wish it would be settled in
one way or another. Just think of it if I had lost four months for nothing....
I am really becoming depressed worrying about all this. The day after tomor-
BoAs' BAFFIN ls LAND LETTER D1ARY
19
n iw we shall have cruised about here for four weeks and have advanced scarcely
fifteen sea miles."
Although very depressed, Boas kept himself busy with photography, with
rharting the coastline, and with taking samples of sea water and ice, until
finally August 28 brought a dramatic change: "Kikkerton in sight-the great
news of the day! It is just appearing through the fog and we are sailing on
under a favorable wind. It began to clear at five this morning and immedi11tcly all sails were hoisted to hurry us along. We are now at Miliaxdjuin
Island and hope to be in Kikkerton by noon. I do not know whether we shall
land, but I am glad to be this far. Onwards, onwards is the word now.")
September 2, Kikkerton At last I find time to write to you, my Marie.
rhere has been so much work and fuss on shipboard and on shore that I had
not time to write. Now let me tell you what has happened .... We were
near Kikkerton and suddenly there was a shout "Ship ahead!" We could not
make out what boat it was, but soon noticed six Eskimo rowing the boat. Mr.
Alexander Hull [Hall), one of the Scots staying here, was in the back of the
h1 iat steering towards us. Soon the boat was beside us and we exchanged
i.ireetings. The captain and helmsman recognized him as an old acquaintance, I as my new countryman. . . . The wind was diminishing rapidly and
the Scottish boat pulled our old Germania into the harbor. We pushed slowly
through the ice and saw the American station. They soon saw us and raised
t hl'ir flag. We heard the dogs howling and saw some of the natives' tents and
soon the Scottish station waved their flag. . . . As we approached a boat
with Eskimo women came from the shore and helped pull our boat into the
lrnrhor and we set out our own boat. At last ten minutes to three on August
l8 we dropped anchor and had arrived happily and safely in the harbor of
Kikkerton. [The Scottish station consisted of living quarters and three storllj.?l' huildings, the former the much-modified original house brought by Williarn Penny in 1857. It possessed a large room for living and sleeping and
Sl'Vl'ral smaller storage and service rooms. Closer to the shore was the Amerirnn station owned by Williams & Co. of New London, Connecticut. Scatttred nearby were Eskimo tents. Kikkerton was now the largest Inuit settlement on the Sound, though at this time most of the natives were hunting in
the interior and only a few, mostly women and those in the stations' employ,
Wl'rc at Kikkerton.)
September 3, Kikkerton ... As everything is full of ice and there is no
rhance that the Germania can get [to the German station) now, I offered to
~o there with a boat full of Eskimo . . . . You can imagine that since everything is so unfortunate this year, there is much to consider and talk over. It
is really too bad. Nothing is as it should be here: the steamer is lying around
s1 imcwhere outside and cannot get in. The Scots see their provisions dwindle,
tobacco and matches are gone. We sit here and can get no farther. Captain
20
DouGLAS CoLE
Kikkerton Harbor looking north. Lying at anchor, left to right, are the Germania, the Catherine, and the Lizzie P. Simmons. The main building of the Scottish station is on the left. Photograph by Boas, between September 10 and 16, 1883. Courtesy American Philosophical Soci
ety.
Roach is trapped near Kingawa and cannot get here, although he is expecting
a ship. Our station is at Kingawa and they do not know whether they can
get home or not.
September 4, Kikkerton If it is in any way possible, I shall go to Kingawa tomorrow. I shall borrow an Eskimo suit, as mine is not ready. This
morning I visited an Eskimo hut for about two hours to collect vocabulary
and I already have quite a number of words about implements, furnishing of
the tepiks, parts of the human body, etc. This afternoon I want to collect
plants. Now let me tell you what happened during the past days. After I
showed Mr. Mutch, the director of the Scottish station, the letter from Mr.
Noble, its owner, he was very kind and promised to be helpful in every way.
My belongings were to be brought on land the next day. In the evening we
visited all the tepiks (Eskimo tents) here, and they did not seem as bad as I
had imagined. I cannot describe them now or I would be able to tell you
BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY
21
nothing else. [The first day's encounter with the Inuit seems to have im1,fl'sscd Boas greatly, for it became the subject of three of his Tageblatt articles.
In one he expressed a strong initial repulsion to their ugliness and to the
horrifying stench that came from the hide tepiks. "Had someone then told
lllt' that in a short time I would be living without resistance in the same
~unditions, I would have denied such imputation with indignation. It was
not long, however, before the force of circumstances had brought me to share
tht' native caribou-hide dwelling and cook in the same kettle-though I usu11lly took the precaution of having my own kettle" (Boas 1884b).] ...
September 9, Kingawa My first boat trip is behind me. I went to our
tution in Kingawa to bring them news of the Germania.... In the fjord
li1y ( :aptain Roach's schooner, the Lizzie B. Simmons. I looked him up and
Wt'nt to Kingawa with him where we arranged that the station should return
to Kikkerton with him ....
September 12, Kikkerton [The arrival of the Scottish station's steamer,
tht' Catherine, under Captain Abernathy, brought mail from home, to which
l\011s responded) At last, I hear from you again. I hear again that you love
lllt', and I may kiss y~ur golden curl. You cannot imagine how joyous, how
huppy I am .... A few days ago, on Friday, just as the ship that brought
y1111r letter arrived here, I was on my journey. It was evening and we landed
111 the foot of a steep cliff in a deep fjord. I had provided for my six Eskimo.
I Nllt alone, the only person awake on the rocks, watching the ice. I had time
11ml peace to think about my sweet love. The deep water was at my feet.
l )pposite me arose the steep and threatening black cliffs, the rapids we had
no1111cd that afternoon rushed and roared at my side, and in the far distance
hone the snow-covered mountains. But I saw only you, my Marie. You and
tht' noble beauty of my surroundings made me conscious of the immensity of
our 11eparation.... [On the same day, he wrote reassuringly to his parents
(IWP: FB/parents 9/12/83): "At home I imagined everything to be much more
difficult than it is. Almost all the Eskimo understand English and I can deal
with them very well. They are willing to work and good-natured, desiring
only to be well-treated. On this first trip I heard no grumbling, although I
hud to drive them very hard. I did my own share, however, and ate no more
1h11n they received so that I could always say, I have it no better than you!"]
September 19, Kikkerton ... Tuesday I moved from the Germania and
c111 Wednesday, the twelfth, I had finished all my letters excepting to you and
lo those at home. Thursday, the thirteenth, the Lizzie P. Simmons arrived
from the station and I had enough to do to transfer all my things. I hear
rnntinually-Herr Dr. here, Herr Dr. there! Added to this everyone wished
to 11h11w me a kindness and I had no peace until the Germania sailed away
11n Sunday morning, the 16th. Now I am alone here in Cumberland Sound,
hut I have found such a kind and friendly welcome here that I feel quite at
22
DouGLAS CoLE
home. I get along well in English and most of the Eskimo understand and
talk English. I have engaged a man for the whole winter, whom I feed. He is
to accompany me wherever I go, hunt for me, etc. He seems to be entirely
reliable, as far as I know and according to his recommendations. I feel quite
assured of succeeding here, so you must all feel likewise ....
[Because of the activity of loading and unloading the Scottish brig, almost
all the Eskimo at the station were fully engaged. The release of Signa (or
Jimmy), who was normally in Captain Roach's employ, was very important
to Boas, the more so since "he knew the coast of Cumberland Sound in
almost all its extensions and, what was the main thing to me, had spent
much time at Lake Kennedy" (Boas 1885a:4). Still, until he could engage a
full boat crew, he had to confine himself to the vicinity of the Kikkerton
islands. His first excursion was a trip to Kingnait Fjord with Signa and Wilhelm, much of it strenuous walking along the irregular coast. Signa proved
"a good soul; he does what I tell him without objecting and does not drink ...."
Only after this short trip was the contract with Signa formally closed, as the
field journal records on September 24: "Signa comes in the evening and we
come to an agreement. He receives the Mauser. I think I may do this, since
there is nothing else. Otherwise he receives bread, molasses and tobacco
according to his wishes."] ...
September 24, Kikkerton [Before the Catherine departed, Boas was able
to write once more directly to Marie.] ... As soon as the brig is gone, the
house is to be repapered and I am to get my table and bed. Up to now I have
to help myself as best I can and must sleep on the floor and have no place of
my own. Then I shall make a frame of sealskin for your picture, or have it
made by a skillful Eskimo woman. I have found glass for it and it shall hang
above my table, you in the middle, my parents to the right and left . . . .
There are two tiers of bunks, so that the three of us have four beds. There is
a mirror between the two and my table will be placed under it. In the pantry
are kept the provisions for daily use. My plans for the near future are to travel
about in the vicinity of Kikkerton, as I have done up to now, then when it
begins to freeze to stay here until about Christmas and to do ethnographical
work. In January the Eskimo again start to travel. I shall go with them and
probably to Lake Kennedy. Perhaps I can carry on from there, perhaps I shall
be forced to come back here. I cannot say anything further with certainty. . . . I got everything from Kingawa that I needed. Mr. Mutch, who
will remain alone at the station here, is a nice helpful person. Originally he
was a servant in the home of Mr. Noble . . . . He never went to school, but
has acquired quite a bit of knowledge by himself, much more than a man
who comes out of a German public school. ... He immediately promised to
help me in every way and in the winter will take me with his sled and dogs
to the sea, where an Eskimo he knows lives who will take me further. . . . I
23
have bought furs now and all I need now is a sleeping bag. So you see I am
very well taken care of in every way. I really enjoy the taste of seal meat and
gulls, so I need have no fear of sickness. . . .
[On September 25 Boas left with Captain Abernathy on the Catherine to
visit an oil cache on Warham Island. It was intended as a short trip, but the
weather turned bad and the brig was forced to take shelter at Naujateling or
Blacklead Island on the south coast. Only on October 4 was Boas able to
return to Kikkerton, where he then took several short trips in Signa's whalehoat. With Wilhelm, Signa, Ututjak (or "Yankee," a nephew of Signa), and
Nachajashi, he then travelled the length of Pangnirtung Fjord. It was during
this trip that Boas first actually tasted raw seal lil'er: "It didn't taste bad once
I overcame a certain resistance" (BFP: Field Journal 1017183). After returning
to the fjord's entrance, the boat party turned northward.] ...
October 11, north of Pangnirtung Fjord ... Yesterday was an eventful
day for us. When I stopped writing there was work to do and I attempted to
mark down a survey of part of the coast on the back of my diary. We rowed
northward along the coast and I intended if possible to go as far as American
I larhor and finish the coastal survey from Kikkerton to Kingawa. At noon
we stopped to rest on a plant-covered terrace and while dinner was being
rooked, I climbed up and found three old well-preserved graves. I wanted
wry much to take the moss and lichen-covered skulls, but I did not dare on
lll'COunt of the Eskimo, whom I would have greatly offended. So I had to row
on without saying anything about my discovery and at about 5:30 in the
rwning we reached our night quarters safely. It was a small, rocky spit of
lund which extends beyond the long stretched out islands. I had slept on one
of these before at Augpalugtualung, on my way to Kingawa. We were busy
11rrnnging our things when we suddenly saw a sail coming in our direction.
Soon my people recognized the Eskimo. One of them, Yankee, recognized
hlH hrother and ran down quickly to help them unload. You can have no idea
of the load in such an Eskimo boat. They are thirty-feet-long whaling boats
hlll'd with men, women and children. In front and in back it was heaped
with skins obtained during the summer's hunting, in the middle lie the dogs,
who from time to time introduce bellowing music, and floating behind, the
1111111 kayak, the leather boat of the Eskimo. They quickly put up the tepiks
(trnts). There were two families. They then began to cook. Soon a second
h11111 arrived that had travelled with them and now we had become a whole
vlll11gl' on this small spit of land, which before this had been uninhabitedlour Eskimo families and me with two tents! First I visited the natives and
hr1111gl11 them tobacco, which they accepted with great pleasure because theirs
hud lwm used up during the summer's hunting. At the same time I bought
twl'IVl' rlindeer skins for our winter clothing. I am now really rid of a worry,
l'lt'l'llllSl' onl' of them brought a stone from Lake Kennedy which I also bought.
24
DouGLAS CoLE
These people had spent the whole summer at the longed-for Lake Kennedy,
where they hunted caribou. Had I not been detained on the old Germania
so long I could have been there a long time ago! Well, I should be satisfied
because during the fall I have surveyed the largest part of the coast of this
sound. Later on the Eskimo came to visit me, they made themselves comfortable in my tent, which had never before seen so many guests. I [entertained?] with half a plug of tobacco and a glass of rum. I had guests until ten
o'clock, men and women . . . .
[Fearing that unless he accompanied the Inuit back to Kikkerton, the
hunters might sell the promised skins to the station, Boas discontinued his
northern trip. After securing his hides, he again left the station with Signa
for Salmon Fjord to the south. The weather was bad, and most of the time,
when they were not sheltering from fog, snow and wind, was spent in surveying the shores; but Boas reported in his field journal on October 17 that
Signa had "showed me Eskimo games and I observed attentively in order to
record and learn everything." Only days after his return to Kikkerton on
October 22, ice began to form on the Sound, and Boas was confined to
Kikkerton until early December when it became strong enough to bear a sled.
He set up a tent on the ice in which he could measure the tides, charted the
island and its surroundings, and, "greatly helped by Mr. Mutch," pursued his
study of the Inuit, focussing on their geographical knowledge. "Every night I
spent with the natives who told me about the configuration of the land,
about their travels, etc. They related the old stories handed over to them by
their ancestors, sang the old songs after the old monotonous tunes, and I saw
them playing the old games, with which they shorten the long, dark winter
nights" (Boas 1884a:253).] .. .
November 5, Kikkerton ... The amiable Eskimo come and go continually. Almost the whole of Kikkerton is drawing maps for me so that I can
find the clues to new problems. I have obtained a great deal already but you
have no idea how difficult it is to drag it out of people. I really intended to
put up my tent down below today but the weather is so bad that I gave it up
until it improves. It is warm [ -4 CJ but it is stormy and snowing. If you
only knew how comfortable I am in my house! I wonder whether you have
read my letters by this time. Poor Marie, you must study all my chicken
scratches. My poor handwriting makes me a true criminal and nothing can
be done about it. . . .
November 18, Kikkerton ... (Tidal) observations and the talks with
the Eskimo take a lot of time. I am ... busy with questioning the natives
who are giving me information on all parts of their homeland. . . . This
morning I sat in a tiny, tiny snowhut at the deathbed of a poor little Eskimo
boy. The Eskimo are so confident that the Doctora'dluk, as they call me, can
help them when they are sick, that I always go to them when they call me.
25
And I always feel so unhappy when I am with those poor people and cannot
hdp them. There sat the mother and I in that small cold hut, the boy lay
lwtween us, wrapped in covers. The mother, with frightened looks, often
uNhd me whether "the pikanini were pinker," and I only saw the small limbs
11row colder and colder and how he gasped harder and harder for breath. And
lhl'll it was all over. You do not know how often my heart is heavy because I
um unable to help. This is already the second deathbed at which I have
tood! I have another patient, a woman with pneumonia. Fortunately she is
llt'tting better, although for three or four days I expected her to die. The poor
mun and his wife were both sick at the same time, and even though the other
EMkimo provided them with meat, it would have gone badly with them had
I not brought them food and something to drink. I tell myself that it is not
my fault that the child died but I feel it as a reproach that I could not help.
And maybe that is why I am turning to my Marie today to find solace in her
loVl' ! . . .
November 25, Kikkerton I am afraid that you will scold me when I
l'oml' back because I write so seldom, my Marie. But I really cannot help it.
I luring all these days I was so tired when I came back home that I did not
wunt to move and evenings my good friends came to tell me something or
11111 to me. Whether I wished to or not I had to write down what they told
lllt' .... Marie, truly it is a rough life here among the Eskimo. I often painlully miss the voice of a friend, but you help me bear all this and I shall
rrturn to you as I left.... Daily now I see the little flag you made for me
lhll llring in the wind. Wilhelm or Signa carries it and some others to the
11l11ns where I make my observations and I always think of you when I see it!
December 2, Kikkerton ... I was interrupted because a woman arrived
who is making fur stockings for me and wants to be paid. Then another one
\'1111\l' carrying her youngest child in her hood and leading the other one.
ThlN one, a little boy named Ko'ketsitii, is my good friend. As soon as he
rrM me he calls out Doctora'dluk, Doctora'dluk, hop, hop!, Doctora'dluk,
l.r. the big doctor, that is my name here, and I occasionally let him ride on
my knee. He talks and tells me a great deal, but unfortunately I do not
11nilrrstand one word, or only very little, as the language is very difficult to
l&"urn. I am good friends with most of the children as I play with them often.
l IN1111lly we sing together and play, whereby 1 always have the secret intention
111 lt'arning their games. I wish you could see me among the Eskimo. It is not
llt'urly as bad as you imagine. I am as comfortably warm in my fur clothes as
I rnuld wish to be. I took a two-hour walk today only for pleasure and in
pltr of the wind and [ - 23 CJ cold I was as warm as in the house. I will be
huppy when I can show you photographs of all the places where I have been!
I 1111 about Kikkerton in order to take them and in the evenings I have important conversations with the Eskimo about customs, songs, religion, etc.
26
DoucLAs COLE
Mr. Mutch is very helpful as interpreter and gives me a great deal of information about all possible things. Now they are all busy making caribou clothing and I hope they will be finished this week. Then I can again think of
travelling and hope first to go northward. In the next month I intend to set
up a depot of provisions, etc. for Davis Strait and then to go to Lake Kennedy. . . .
December 4, Kikkerton
. . . It is strange how one's feeling for cold
changes. At home yesterday I would have frozen miserably and here it seemed
like a beautiful day in spring. A trip with a dog sled is very amusing. Imagine
a small, low hand sled, such as one uses at home for trucking, only lighter.
In front are twelve dogs all pulling at a rope to which their reins are attached.
Signa, Wilhelm, and I each wrapped in our furs sit on the low sled. Signa
drives the dogs with his twenty-foot-long whip. He must forever yell and call
to them in order to keep them going and then they run and jump pell-mell,
occasionally bite one another, and in half an hour or less, the reins are in
such confusion that we must halt. Hopefully! I can leave here in a week, to
start on my journey north . . . . Jimmy Mutch, my host, ... is obliging in
every way and helps me with his best knowledge of the Eskimo language
whenever he can so that I am very much obligated to him for adding to my
knowledge in this respect. He even lends me his dogs for trips. In short, I
have to be thankful to him in every way. He is a very pious man, who allows
no work to be done in the house on Sundays. I do not allow this to keep me
from my own work, whatever it may be, excepting to desist from any noisy
work, such as carpentry or repair work, etc. At home I believed I would have
much free time in the winter, but I was mistaken, for I hardly have a minute
to myself.
[It had become clear quite early from his conversations with the Eskimo
that some of Boas' basic information about their travel and geographic
knowledge was wrong. He had thought from reports in Europe that the Cumberland Sound Inuit often travelled to and along the western coast of Baffin
Island. He found, however, that "there was not one man who knew anything
about the country"; only a single native, and he born at Pond Inlet, had even
heard of the lgluling of Fury and Hecla Strait (Boas 1884:256-57). Boas
determined, nevertheless, to head west as soon as travel was possible: first to
Lake Kennedy (Lake Nettilling) and then to Foxe Channel and the western
coast. The arrival of two Eskimo from the northern part of the Gulf heralded
the beginning of sled travel.) . . .
December 9, Kikkerton Today we had visitors for the first time, Padloaping and Shorty, two Eskimo from Tikeraxdjuax. They arrived yesterday
toward 10 p. m. in sleds with their wives and one child each. Unfortunately,
there are again two children very sick with a diphtheria-like sickness, [and]
both died. One belongs to Ssegdloaping, the other to Bob. This will cause
27
an unpleasant disruption to the making of my caribou suit as the women will

not work for three days. At the end of this time, which is not set definitely,
they have to ask the mourning women whether there is any objection to
them working. Padloaping and Shorty came in the morning to allow me to
question them about Nettilling. I got quite valuable information from them.
Padloaping saw near Tudron tracks of Adlen [a fabulous people with some
animal features; cf. Boas 1888:637]. They were broken off at the tips. He
I hinks he walked on bearskin.
December 10, Kikkerton Padloaping and Shorty finished the maps of
Ncttilling. They wanted to go back this evening, not having accomplished
what they wanted, namely to borrow dogs with which to get their fur skins
down from Kangia (end of Tininixdjuax). The dogs in Kikkerton are not
very numerous because the disease was very bad last fall. There are very few
rases now. I get everything ready for my departure. At about 11 [p.m.] all is
rLady. My bird slippers will be finished, although I was afraid that they would
ulso not work on these, but it is only sealskin and caribou skin which they
arc forbidden to make into new clothing. They are, however, permitted to
mend anything and make new things of birds or European goods. Not all
know these rules exactly; when in doubt, they usually tum to Nukhikarlin
11r Eisik or Kanterodoaping.
lln the fall a disease, apparently brought from Greenland by the first whaltrs to have wintered in the Sound and now endemic, struck every settlement,
killing about half the dogs in the Sound by December. It was precisely from
Padloaping's and Shorty's settlement on Nettilling Fjord that Boas had hoped
111 secure dogs to take him to the great inland lake. Under the circumstances,
lw could undertake only a survey of the northern part of the Sound, borrowing a few of Mutch's dogs for his light sled. On December 11, Boas, Wilhelm,
und Signa left for Anamitung.]
December 12, near Niuxtung Dear Marie! I am now two days distant
from Kikkerton, at the same place where I was a long time ago in a boat and
where I met the Eskimo who were returning from Nettilling. What great
differences exist between now and then .... Although it is [ - 35 CJ cold,
I did not feel cold while I walked. My caribou clothing was almost too warm.
I almost went off alone with Signa, because Wilhelm's clothing was not ready,
hut Mr. Mutch took pity on me and lent me his things. I hope they will send
us the missing things next week . . . . Do you know that for a while I believed
I had no heart, because I did not take things so much to heart as others did.
l\ut I know better now. You, my Marie, have taught me that I am still able
111 feel. How happy we will be! But I am wandering from my excursion to
Augpalugtung. (You wrote me once I should not use logic in my lettersd1 m 't you do that in this case.) I believe that one can be really happy only
as a member of humanity as a whole, if one works with all one's energy
28
DouoLAs CotE
together with the masses towards his goals. I think if one always felt that way
it would be much easier to bear hardships and one would be more thankful
for every joy. But now good night! I only want to say once again that I always,
always, love you immeasurably, that I only long for the moment that shall
take me back to you and with longing I picture the time when nothing shall
separate us. And now sleep well, dearest. Dream of your Franz.
December 13, near Niuxtung ... Wilhelm and I will leave early and
go farther north to make recordings of the coast. We shall soon come to the
water holes which are kept open by the [tidal currents of the fjords) and will
prevent us from proceeding further. . . . Fog hinders us considerably, but we
get four miles further to the north. As we return Signa is busy chopping food
for the dogs, i.e. first to saw frozen seal meat and then chop it up with an
ax .... ltu is going back to Kikkerton so I shall give him a letter to take to
Mutch. I want to ask him to send a lamp etc .... You see, my Marie, I am
writing my journal and to you on the same pages. It is the only way I have of
letting you too get a picture of my daily life. The iglu is so cold that I cannot
write more than is absolutely necessary for you to learn what I actually do.
So accept these notes as words really directed to you. Now that we have been
in the iglu for four hours, it is warm enough to write. It has not yet reached
the thawing point, but still I feel quite comfortable. Feelings of comfort and
discomfort are really quite relative. At home we would be dreadfully sorry for
anyone in circumstances such as ours. But we are merry and of good cheer.
Soon it will be Christmas. I hope by that time to be in Anarnitung, a settlement here, and from there go by sled to Kikkerton. And now goodnight, my
dear, best-beloved ....
December 14, Sednirun In the morning ltu and Tom go back to Kikkerton with all the dogs, excepting two belonging to Jimmy. In leaving we
encountered many difficulties in getting down from the icefoot [the narrow
fringe of ice formed along the shore by ebbing tides and freezing spray.) The
rope tears and I fall up to my knees into water. But I do not get wet at [ - 38
CJ. We first follow the tracks ltu's sled made yesterday and then from Kaivun
to Sednirun. Signa builds the iglu in four and a half hours. It is at last finished. The pulling was very hard as we have a heavy load and the snow is
very soft. The worst is that everything is wet from sweat and then frozen the
next morning. . . .
December 15, near American Harbor It seemed surprisingly warm this
morning. It had started snowing. This hinders my observations considerably,
but I succeeded in reaching the entrance to American Harbor. Frequently we
could scarcely see 100 steps ahead .... According to Signa the snow is soft
here all year round .... Tomorrow we want to start for Operdnivikdjuax,
but we shall have to leave some of our things here as they are too heavy to
pull over the soft snow. The snow is hindering us a great deal. . . . So you
29
nc, that although the plan for such a trip seems very simple, its execution is
hcsct with many difficulties. I feel quite comfortable today, however, since it
IK rnmparatively warm and we do not freeze in the iglu. I do not know whether
Wl' shall reach our goal tomorrow, but I hope so, because I am really in a
hurry. . . . At the rate we are travelling we shall in all probability spend
( :hristmas outdoors . . . .
December 16, north of Pangnirtung My dear sweetheart. I am writing
lonight at the end of a hard day. When we got up at six this morning it
looked so dark and threatening that I first thought we would not be able to
Ntart out. About [nine inches] of snow had fallen during the night and [it]
was very soft. As a result we could proceed only with very great effort and
Wl're completely exhausted when we arrived here at noon. We are not three
miles from our last iglu and not yet in American Harbor. I had hoped to be
Ihere much sooner. . . . I have left a large part of my belongings in the last
l11lu. We were hardly able to carry what we now have with us, just sleeping
hngs and something to eat. This morning while we were still in the iglu,
Wilhelm and I invented a lamp, that is almost our greatest necessity. To make
II we used an old butter tin and cut three holes into the lid. We also made a
pot out of an old tin can. Now we have glowing lamps and can quickly brew
l'I 1ffcc and our iglu is also warmer. Signa was most discouraged because of the
l111rd work today, and it really is too taxing. I shall stay here tomorrow and
Nurvcy. . . . Do you know how I pass the time these long evenings? I have a
n 1py of Kant with me, which I am studying, so that I shall not be so complltcly uneducated when I return. Life here really makes one dull and stupid
(only at times however-when I get back to Kikkerton I will be sharp again).
I have to blush when I remember that during our meal tonight I thought how
wood a pudding with plum sauce would taste. But you have no idea what an
rllcct privations and hunger, real hunger, have on a person. Maybe Mr. Kant
IN a good antidote! The contrast is almost unbelievable when I remember
1h11t a year ago I was in society and observed all the rules of good taste, and
lonight I sit in this snow hut with Wilhelm and an Eskimo eating a piece of
rnw, frozen seal meat which had first to be hacked up with an ax, and greedily
wulping my coffee. Is that not as great a contradiction as one can think of? . . .
December 18, north of Pangnirtung ... The tramping here is very
I Iring. Yesterday Wilhelm and I went up to American Harbor. It was very
difficult because of the soft snow and the piled up coastal ice. Signa had gone
Nouth to look for seals in the water holes, but did not see many and got none.
I ll saw a duck which had gotten lost. I really wanted to go to our former iglu
II 1day to get a few things, but I turned around because my face might easily
huvc frozen at [ - 40 CJ and a south wind and it was not absolutely necessary
to have the things. Instead, Wilhelm and I climbed a hill behind the iglu
uml 1 made some measurements of the height of the sun (it was only forty-
30
Doum..As CoLE
five degrees above the horizon) and took observations toward the south and
lmigen. Signa stayed home to repair his gun, and in doing so broke it completely. So, if the sled does not come tomorrow, we shall have to go back to
Kikkerton as we haven't enough fuel for making fires and since the snow is
so soft we are not able to_ transport our things ourselves. If the sled does not
come we shall have to go to Anarnitung the day after tomorrow-about
fifteen miles from here. So you see, everything is most unfavorable for me
and I am very cross about it. However, I have not lost courage, what is bad
today may be better tomorrow. . . .
December 19, north of Pangnirtung . . . We are still at the third iglu.
This morning Signa went to Sednirun, our former iglu, to get tobacco, tea,
and carne-pura [a condensed meat beverage]. He has one more cartridge for
his Mauser, and he is going to try to get a seal with it. Wilhelm and I will go
northward to American Harbor. We finally got that far. We left at 7:30 when
the temperature was [ -48 CJ. We found no trace of the sled and came back.
Signa appeared soon after us. He had not been able to use his one cartridge;
because of the extreme cold there is lots of fog at the water holes. Since the
sled from Kikkerton is not there yet and our oil is used up, I have decided we
must go to Anarnitung tomorrow morning. We get everything ready. The
valuable things will be packed in the bearskin and pulled by hand [on the
furry side, which slid easily on the snow]. We get up at about four o'clock
and hope to get to Anarnitung before dark. Isn't that a nice trick of fate, first
I have to leave half of my things behind, and then the rest, and now I must
be happy that there is an Eskimo settlement near enough to this place that I
can get there by evening. I hope I shall have no difficulty getting dogs there,
so that I car;i be in Kikkerton for Christmas. Someday when I shall relate this
adventure it will sound terrible and dangerous. Now we are laughing at our
bad luck and the surprise of the people in Anarnitung when they see three
men arrive from Kikkerton on foot and with two dogs. And we laugh too,
imagining what Mr. Mutch will say when his sled arrives here and finds the
nest empty! But tomorrow we must crawl into an Eskimo family bed and at
last get dry things. I believe that later on when I shall be telling of our trip,
incidents like these will be the main subject. We have a long trek ahead,
fifteen miles without a path or sign post! At least I shall get as far as I wanted
since Anarnitung was the goal of this trip. This evening we stuff ourselves
with seal meat, then we shall have to walk as long as our legs will carry us. I
wonder what you are doing now, my love. When you think of me you cannot
possibly picture me in the situation in which I now find myself.
[The party was indeed in a very serious situation and the trip to Anarnitung proved far more difficult than contemplated. In the "one central dramatic incident around which the diary and his later popular accounts hinge"
(Stocking 1968:148), Boas and his companions wandered for hours in fog
31
11nJ darkness, stumbling and crawling over soft snow that covered thick,
jutting sheets of ice. When they finally found the coast, Signa, quite disoritnted, had no idea where they were. Hungry and cold, they spent the night
!ramping about a relatively sheltered place until the moon rose. Then, having found sled tracks to and from Anarnitung, they followed them in the
wrong direction, north rather than south. Only when they reached the ice
holes at the entrance to Issortuxdjuax, the northernmost fjord of the Sound,
did they realize where they were. They turned back and, after twenty-six
hours of travel, at last reached Anarnitung.]
December 21, Anarnitung We got up at three o'clock on the twentieth
unJ were ready to leave at five. The most necessary things were packed into
the bearskin and we started northward in a nice cold wind. We reached
Sarhuxdjuax safely walking over good ice, but here we met with thick fog
11nJ were unable to see ahead any distance, so that it was impossible to find
11ur way. The ice was rough and bad. The dogs refused to continue so Signa
haJ to leave them and the bearskin. We continued as rapidly as we could,
hut were unable to find land before dark. Suddenly we heard a sled, but it
ltd us in the wrong direction. We listened for the least sound. After the
moon rose we found the tracks of a sled which we followed. They led us to
Sarhuxdjuax. We turned immediately and at 6:30, having wandered twentyMix hours, we at last reached Anarnitung. Wilhelm's toes were frozen. I had
frozen fingers and nose, Signa a frozen nose! We went into O[xaitung)'s iglu
11nJ went to sleep immediately. . . . [At four o'clock the same evening:] Ox11itung is giving food to the dogs and promises to take me to Kikkerton.
'linnorrow I shall send my things to Sarbuxdjuax in his sled and set up my
Mtation there for two days. Then I shall either first explore Anarnitung and
~urroundings or go up the second fjord from Kingawa. At the end of the week
I will probably be back in Kikkerton. In the afternoon I go out with Oxaitung
who shows me the iglus of Anarnitung, as well as the boats, an old tepik in
which a boy died this fall, and the old hut foundations, which all have names.
They are the first of their kind I have seen here. Afterwards we go to the
Island lgdlungajung, near where there are five other tepiks. We visit Metik,
1hc oldest man living at the gulf [cf. Abbes 1884:36; 1890:57). I had hoped
to get information from him about Foxe Channel, but got very little. Metik
had been here in the morning and had received a piece of tobacco from me,
for which he was very grateful. When he was young the Inuit went from here
111 Nettilling in the spring before the ice was gone. They took their boats by
slcJ to the Koukdjuax [River]. From there the women went northward across
the lake, while the men went down the Koukdjuax in their kayaks and then
up two rivers along the salt water where they hunted caribou. He gave me a
11 mg list of names for that region, but he cannot draw, perhaps because he
has very had eyes. He looks strong and healthy, but his hair is gray and
32
DouGLAS CoLE
according to what I am told must be about 80 years old. He knew Amarox

and Sigeriax and called the country to which they travelled lgnirn which is
a part of Augpalugtijung where many Eskimo live [cf. Boas 1888:432-33) ....
The last day was really taxing-to walk without stopping for twenty-six hours
with the thermometer at [ -45 CJ so that I could not keep my fingers and
nose from freezing, with nothing to eat and nothing to drink and no assurance that we would ever find our goal. Well, the adventure ended well enough,
but it is strange that what I hoped was the shortest day of my life turned out
to be the longest. I was unable to catch up on my sleep today, but tomorrow
I expect to sleep wonderfully in my new iglu. I am now writing resting on
the sleeping quarters of the iglu on a caribou skin. I am quite comfortable.
Wilhelm is sleeping to my right and to the left the woman of the iglu sits and
dries my clothes. Kanaka (the man from Kikkerton), Signa, and my host
Oxaitung are sitting in the hall in front of me, eating frozen seal. I am thinking of you, my love. I must also eat my supper-frozen raw seal. Then we
shall have tea and bread. It is customary that the guest gives tea and bread
to the "K'odlunarn" (whites) and the host provides seal meat and tends to
everything else. Enough for today, my darling. I am thinking of you always.
December 22, Sarbuxdjuax (Kingawa) As intended I rode here this
morning with Oxaitung, Signa, and Wilhelm.... It was very cold with a
strong north wind, so that one after another our faces became frozen. We all
of us suffer more or less from the frost. I found it impossible here in Nudnirn
(name of the island in Sarbuxdjuax) to walk against the wind, to make observations and to write so that I txoov <'xexovtl
-6-ucp ["willing, but with
unwilling heart" (Iliad IV:43)) gave up working. Wilhelm, both of whose big
toes had been frozen, insisted in Anarnitung that he would be able to come
along, but he felt so unwell that I could make no use of him. I immediately
sent him into the iglu which Signa and Oxaitung were building. I went out
alone, but had to turn back after an hour without having accomplished anything. I cannot change compass and pencil. When I returned at about two
o'clock the iglu was finished. We soon had our dinner.... What a difference
between this evening and the evening the day before yesterday. Now in the
comfortable iglu, then outdoors half frozen and half starved. Do you know
what we ate for supper? Butter that was so hard that we had to hack it with
our strongest knife-the way one splits wood-and lump sugar. Oxaitung,
who went yesterday to get our bearskin, said that at first we were very near
Anarnitung and then wandered back and forth and finally went towards Kingawa. The annoying thing is that we crossed the path made by sleds twice
without knowing it. I would like best to return to Kikkerton the day after
tomorrow with Oxaitung and our sled. I want to return here with renewed
strength. I only hope Wilhelm will not be sick, the last few days were really
nerve-racking. . . .
be
33
December 23, Anamitung Now I am again sitting in Oxaitung's iglu

nnd taking part in great festivity. Oxaitung has caught two seals today and
C'Vcry man in the settlement is to receive a piece. Is it not a beautiful custom
nrnong these "savages" [wilden) that they bear all deprivations in common,
unJ also are at their happiest best-eating and drinking-when some one
hus brought back booty from the hunt? I often ask myself what advantages
our "good society" possesses over that of the "savages" and find, the more I
Nl'C of their customs, that we have no right to look down upon them. Where
urnongst our people could you find such hospitality as here? Where are people
Nil willing, without the least complaint, to perform every task asked of them?
Wl have no right to blame them for their forms and superstitions which may
NC'l'm ridiculous to us. We "highly educated people" are much worse, relatively speaking. The fear of traditions and old customs is deeply implanted
In mankind, and in the same way as it regulates life here, it halts all progress
IC1r us. I believe it is a difficult struggle for every individual and every people
111 give up traditions and follow the path to truth. The Eskimo are sitting
uround me, their mouths filled with raw seal liver (the spot of blood on the
hack of the paper shows you how I joined in). I believe, if this trip has for
llll' (as a thinking person) a valuable influence, it lies in the strengthening
11f the viewpoint of the relativity of all cultivation [bildung) and that the evil
us well as the value of a person lies in the cultivation of the heart [herzensbilclitng], which I find or do not find here just as much as amongst us, and that
nil service, therefore, which a man can perform for humanity must serve to
promote truth. Indeed, if he who promotes truth searches for it and spreads
It, it may be said that he has not lived in vain! But now I really must get
hack to the cold Eskimo land.... This morning I went to Kingawa by sled
with Oxaitung and Signa, so that I got as far as I had been by boat in the
fall. I had hoped to finish my map as far as Nudnirn. For that purpose I had
made a very thick handle for my pencil, hoping that I could hold it in spite
cif the cold, but unfortunately the point had broken and I was unable to
rlsharpen it. I had to return to the iglu without having accomplished my
I ask .... Wilhelm's left foot is so badly frozen that I am afraid I shall not be
nhle to take him to Kikkerton. We put him into his sleeping bag which we
ticJ on Nuvukdjua's sled and drove home. Tomorrow morning Oxaitung and
I will drive directly to Kikkerton. Signa and Kanaka have to go by way of
l'amiujang and Sednirun. I have arranged with Oxaitung to return with him,
live with him and be driven about by him in that neighborhood. As payment
I shall give him cartridges for his gun, which he received from the German
station. I hope that from here I shall be able to reach Kingawa and the two
next fjords .... The Eskimo are now sitting around me, telling one another
11ld tales. Too bad I cannot understand them. When I return I shall also learn
to understand. . . .
34
DouGLAS COLE
December 28, Anarnitung Now I am back here again. During all these
days I have not had the opportunity to write in my journal nor to my Marie.
You can imagine that I was very tired when we reached Kikkerton after our
twenty-two-hour ride .... Of course Mr. Mutch was aroused immediately
by the noise and got up to cook something. Indeed, I could make good use
of it. I had eaten nothing for twenty-two hours and had not lived well for
fourteen days. So I enjoyed the cocoa and caribou roast thoroughly. I went
to bed at about four and slept until ten. In the evening I unpacked, took our
Christmas presents to the house, a small Christmas tree out of the box, collected several good cans for our dinner and invited Captain Roach's cooper,
Rasmussan (he is a Dane), who is alone at the American station. At five
o'clock we h~d a lighted Christmas tree and a pleasant Christmas celebration. We spent the evening drinking punch and wine as though we were at
home. Unfortunately Betty, Signa's wife, came over in the evening. She was
drunk and caused us a lot of trouble. . . . We started out again this morning
and arrived here safely at 3:30. Wilhelm's toe does not seem to be as bad as
I feared. The nail and a part of the ball are peeling off. I have bought several
[old Eskimo objects).
December 30, Anarnitung ... Last night I dreamt very vividly that I
was in America and with you. The dream was so vivid that I was most disappointed when I woke up in the morning to find myself in the iglu. You
must not imagine that such a snow hut is a cold home. It is completely
papered with skins and two lamps are kept burning. These supply light and
heat. We all sit on a large platform which is covered with caribou skins. But
I think I still prefer a European home! Only two days more, and the year
begins which will take me to you. The time passes almost too quickly for the
amount of work I have to do here. If I accomplish everything, I still will not
have the time to finish the map and the ethnographic work. I shall, however,
attain my own purposes very well. I know very accurately about the migration
of the Eskimo and the routes they take, how they travel back and forth, and
their relationship to neighboring tribes. Yesterday evening I had a long conversation with an old woman, who came here from far in the north, and who
has knowledge of happenings as far north as North Greenland! I am gradually
learning to make myself understood somewhat by the Eskimo and to understand them. The language is dreadfully difficult. . . .
January 3, 1884, Anarnitung I must really catch up with my journal
which I neglected very much these last days. On December 31 Oxaitung and
I went to Kangertlukduax .... We got home at about four o'clock, tired and
hungry. . . . After supper I gave Oxaitung a bottle of cognac and Wilhelm
and I drank a bottle of Swedish punch and talked until twelve. As we ate
supper at seven o'clock, we remembered that it was New Year at home and
so I sent New Year's greetings to you at twelve o'clock. I know that you
35
thought of me, probably with as great a longing as I thought of you. But the
difference! You were among your people, the happy ones who see you daily,
hourly, were among those whom you love. Believe me when I say that the
thing almost the hardest to bear here is not to have any one with whom to
Hpeak a sensible word, no one who is in any way close to you. But in nine
and a half months I shall be back! Oh! could I but give wings to time. How
I would hurry to your side so that we might both be comforted. I greeted the
New Year with three cheers according to the good old custom, and woke up
the next morning to begin the New Year with old work.... On January 1
I surveyed the south coast. The weather was clear and cold and at about four
o'clock we reached the head of the fjord, where an iglu was built. There were
two very ancient graves nearby. There is scarcely a spot here where one does
not find traces of ancient habitation. The Eskimo, without exception, ascribe
these to the Tudnik ["Tornik" in Boas 1885a:89; cf. 1888:634-36], a fabled
pl~ople who are believed to have lived here .... In the evening I promised
to give Oxaitung more cartridges if he would recount some old stories well.
Since then he is most anxious to tell stories. During the night our iglu, which
turned out to be somewhat too large, was very cold, so that I was hardly able
to sleep .... On the morning of the third I used an astrolabe to be certain
ahout the time. During the day I went with Oxaitung to K'exertaxdjung. I
do not know how many times I froze my fingers while taking three photo1-traphs! I found out that lti who has been my poor patient for many weeks is
finally dead .... In the evening Oxaitung told me a tale, "Unikartua," i.e.
old tales of the origin of the white whales, etc. [cf. Boas EEN; 1888:
(J 35-3 7].
January 21, Ttninixdjuax Here I have made a long pause. I have again
kept my journal in my book and did not get a chance to write to you, my
heloved. I am in an iglu again and writing in your book at last .... First let
me tell you what happened. Early on January 4 I went to the before men1ii med fjord with Oxaitung. In the meantime it had become windy and started
to snow, so that I could do nothing and we returned to Anarnitung. There
we had an unpleasant surprise. Oxaitung's wife, who had had a slight sore
throat, was very sick, so there was nothing for me to do but to return to
Kikkerton on a sled that was going there next day. I took advantage of the
warm weather [ - 17 CJ and took Wilhelm back with me .... We had arranged that Oxaitung should call for me after his wife improved. The first
thing that happened was that I became sick in Kikkerton, presumably good
fi>od no longer agrees with me. Friday Uanuary 11] I was well again and began
writing up my observations. It was high time that I did so. I have not yet
finished, but still I am a little clearer about them. Last Friday, January 18, I
wanted to go to Tininixdjuax with Jimmy Mutch. It is important for me to
i.:o there because of my contemplated trip to Foxe Channel. On Thursday
36
DOUGLAS COLE
somebody came from Anarnitung with the news that Oxaitung's wife was
apparently worse, not better. He also report~d that many Eskimo blamed me
for it, as it really seems as though sickness a d death follows my footsteps. If
I were superstitious, I really would believe t at my presence brought misfortune to the Eskimo! Many are supposed to have said they did not wish to see
me in their iglu again, nor Mutch. He became frightened because of this so
I set out alone today, Monday, the twenty-first. Just as I expected, I was
received here just as kindly as before and am now at home in Tininixdjuax.
[In the autumn diphtheria had broken out in Kikkerton. Boas had recorded in his field journal on October 23 that a woman, very ill with fever
and inflamed lungs, had asked for him. He provided salve for her chest,
medicine to combat the fever, and opium against her cough, but he could do
no more. Her death on October 25 was the beginning of an epidemic. "It is
terrible how diphtheria and pneumonia are now prevailing among the poor
Eskimo," he wrote only days later. "In almost every tent one or another is
sick. Since the death of the woman, two children have died and another is
sick. . . . They came to the Doctora'dluk, as I am now known, with such
faith, and I can do nothing" (BFP: FB/parents 10/31/83). The disease spread
throughout the Sound-the first reported outbreak of diphtheria in the area.
Since the Germania and the Catherine were the only ships to visit the Sound
that season, they must have brought the disease, though no cases were detected aboard either. "Deeply shaken by the devastation which the epidemic
caused among the children as well as by the quick and deadly course of individual cases," the Inuit resorted to incantation to discover the cause of the
illness. "Thus the angakit, the shaman of the Eskimos, came to the unhappy
notion that the disease was connected with my presence" and "an extraordinary unpleasant ill-will formed among the Eskimo against me." At lmigen on
the west side of the Sound, "it was declared that no one was to have anything
to do with me; above all, no one was to allow me into the huts or lend me
their dogs." He received the report, as noted, at Kikkerton while preparing
for a trip with Mutch, who now preferred, in light of the reigning distrust,
to stay at the station. Boas, however, "thought that this kind of hostility
should not be allowed to prevail" and set off with Signa for lmigen, overnighting at Tininixdjuax (Boas 1885b:l2).)
January 22, Tminixdjuax . . . Yesterday morning we left Kikkerton with
Mutch's dogs. Wilhelm has still to remain in the house, as his foot is no
better. The right one is well again, but there is a big hole in the left foot. It
really is fortunate that this did not happen to me. What would I have done
if I had had to lose all this precious time? We had good weather and Signa
and I arrived here at about four o'clock. About two hours distant from the
settlement we met natives who had gone out to catch seals. They showed us
the way and we quickly reached our destination. You have no idea how anx-
37
iously one looks for the appearance of the icefoot on the horizon, and then
when one is near to land with what joy one greets the sign of an iglu. It is
impossible to tell how comfortable and beautiful it seems when one enters
into these dirty, narrow spaces, at the appearance of which I at first turned
away in horror. . . . This morning I arranged matters with Piera. Next month
he will supply nine dogs and circle Nettilling with us. I must see that I get
fifteen dogs for this time, then everything will be arranged. I hope to start
on about February 3. Tomorrow I shall go to Anarnitung where I expect to
get dogs. I shall work there for a while then come back here to buy seals.
Then I have to go to lmigen to borrow dogs and seals, and then back to
Kikkerton to make preparations for the journey. How far I shall get depends
entirely on the weather. Now my Marie, I have at last reached the point
where I shall be able to complete what I came here for. I know now that it is
only a small, small part of my original plan, but I shall have to be satisfied
with it. I have carried out my own plans well and may be satisfied with the
results. The cartographic work too has contributed enough new material. . . . I at least have the satisfaction that I have worked to the best of my
ability. Only one month more and half my time shall have passed-the longest half, because from now until my return I shall be busy all the time. In
February I shall travel to the north-west, March and April to the south-west.
In May I shall leave the south and go north. For a time now I shall have my
own dog-team, which I have borrowed here. They will take me to Anarnitung tomorrow morning. . . . Will fortune be good to me that I can hope to
see our fondest wishes realized speedily? I do not want a German professorship
because I know I would be restricted to my science and to teaching, for which
I have little inclination. I should much prefer to live in America in order to
he able to further those ideas for which I live. But how to do this, I do not
know. Well, I cannot do anything about it now and I shall have to wait
patiently and see how matters develop when I return. . . . What I want to
live and die for, is equal rights for all, equal possibilities to learn and work
for poor and rich alike! Don't you believe that to have done even the smallest
hit for this, is more than all science taken together? I do not think I would
he allowed to do this in Germany. Remember you once wrote me about your
father, that all his actions, all his work was for his fellowman. It is the best
that can happen to a man, to be able to be fully effective in that way. Whether
successful or not, is it not the kind of work that gives the greatest satisfaction? And you, dear girl, will always help me. If my strength should weaken,
you will give me renewed strength-just as you give me new strength here ....
Rut I must return from my dream to harsh reality! The activities of the Eskimo, the howling of the dogs, the screaming of the children, all in this
small iglu, call me back. I often wonder while sitting in this company at
night, in what sort of company you are. At least you have the advantage of
38
DouGLAS COLE
being able to speak with them. I have, however, sometimes found that what
one hears in "society" is worth [no more for me than] the conversation of
these people here.
January 23, lmigen I started out with thirteen dogs this morning, but
they are all such pathetic animals that they can make scarcely any headway.
For that reason I have stopped here in Imigen, as I shall have to stop here
sometime anyway. I want to order seals here and see whether I can get better
dogs. The men have not yet returned from seal-hunting. I wonder how they
have reacted to the ultimatum I had transmitted to Tyson, the Eskimo who
would not allow me to enter his house. He is taking the same trip that I am
taking this summer and I let him know that he would get nothing from me,
even if I saw him starving before my eyes, if he did not first come to me and
ask me into his iglu. I hope none of my dogs will run away tonight so that I
may proceed unhindered. To my great sorrow, I hear here that Oxaitung's
wife died last night. Two Eskimo from Anarnitung, Padlukulu and Hannibal
Jack, brought the news. It is really terrible what destruction throat sicknesses
have caused among the Eskimo this year. I shall probably go up there tomorrow but I do not yet know where I shall stay. I want to give provisions to
Oxaitung immediately, because he may not leave the house for three days. I
wish I could persuade Oxaitung to take me up to Nettilling. A few days ago
a child died in Kikkerton, whose mother had died here in the fall. The day
before she died she sent word to the station asking them to make a box as
coffin, because she wished to be placed next to her mother. The child also
asked for tobacco to take to her mother [cf. Boas 1888:613]. Isn't that touching? I have noticed quite frequently that the Eskimo face death calmly, although, while they are well, they fear the dead as well as death. I have also
seen very great and true love between parents and children. . . . I cannot
forget Joe, who is also dead, and who told me how miserable he was because
of the death of his son last spring. And these are "savages" who are supposed
to be of no worth compared to Europeans! I do not believe that among us
people could be found who under similar circumstances would be so willing
to work or be as happy and satisfied! I must say I am quite well satisfied with
the character of the savage Eskimo. . . . [In Imigen Boas acted quickly to
deal with the ill-feeling against him. Immediately upon his arrival, he assembled the men and told Tyson [Napekin], "the chief instigator," that "all
intercourse between us would cease until he invited me into his hut." Since
the man had only a poor gun and little ammunition and, moreover, intended
to travel in the summer to Davis Strait where "he would be completely dependent upon me as no whites lived on that coast," the threat carried weight.
Boas thought that his resolute action had been both appropriate and effective. A man immediately invited him into his iglu for the night and the
Eskimo gave no signs of mistrust. A few weeks later Tyson came to Kikkerton
39
"lspecially to reconcile me" with gifts of seal pelts and an offer of service.
"With this the incident closed and from then on nothing disturbed the friendly
rdations between the natives and me" (Boas 1885b:12), although the Febnmry 19 entry indicates continuing Inuit reticence.)
January 25, Anamitung When I arrived here last night I was really too
tired to write. It took us from seven in the morning until seven in the evening to cover the few miles from lmigen to here (twenty-four miles at the
utmost) .... Toward the end it was so dark that I walked ahead in order not
to lose the trail. It led us all the way around Anarnitung and we finally got
stuck in the only entrance to the interior, ltidliaxdjung. We left the dogs and
sled behind and climbed over the icefoot and went to Charlie's iglu. Charlie,
the father of Oxaitung's wife, his son and Oxaitung were mourning in Oxaitung's iglu. I sent bread and coffee and someone to inquire what they needed.
Because of this our bread ration has grown very short. . . . [Oxaitung) seems
ahout the same as before, although he is definitely sad about the death of his
wife. He offered, if I wished, to take me to K'aggilortung.... At last I have
found a second person who at least knows the names as far as lgluling [on
the Foxe Basin]: Metik, the oldest man on the sound, who has his knowledge
from a woman who went over there long, long ago. Gradually I have gotten
information from old people, so that I am better informed as to what the
oldest people thought.... My census of the country is coming along well.
As far as I know, I need only two more settlements, Nuvujen and Naujateling, and then I shall be finished [Much of the census material, sometimes
ii.:lu by iglu, is in Boas EEN; portions were published in Boas 1888:426) ....
[Further surveys from Anarnitung went badly because of rough ice, soft
snow, and fog, and on January 29 Boas left for Kikkerton with Oxaitung and
Signa. At this time two Kikkerton families decided to cross the Cumberland
Peninsula to visit friends in the Padli area of Davis Strait, a region strangely
free of the dog disease. Boas, still lacking dogs, joined them, but the snow
was so thin, the ice so rough and rocky, that it soon seemed useless to proceed. Although two continued, with instructions from Boas that he wanted
as many as eighteen dogs, his western trip to Lake Nettilling and beyond was
now almost hopeless: if the Padli dogs came at all, they could not arrive
before the end of March, too late for a proper trip to the west coast. But he
persisted in the hope that he could yet get as far as lgluling and even Admiralty Inlet. "It was a mistake," he later realized, "not to have immediately
foresworn the trip and turned myself to research on the west coast of Cumherland Sound for the rest of the winter. It was so very hard, however, for
me completely to abandon a plan which I had long nurtured and cherished
and worked for; so, as long as a spark of hope remained, I staked everything
on reaching the longed-for Foxe Basin" (Boas 1885b:l4). Still hoping that
he might get a team from Padli, Boas went to Anarnitung to collect seal
40
DouGLAS CoLE
meat for them. The hunting was unsuccessful, partly due to an unusual paucity of seals at the water holes and partly to the terrible weather.)
February 14, Anarnitung Today I went hunting, but not with exactly
splendid success. The only thing I shot was pulled under the ice by the current. There I sat, like an Eskimo, behind my ice hole at the water's edge and
patiently waiting for a head to appear. You cannot imagine what an impression it makes in this cold season to sit so near the edge of the water and to
hear the roaring and foaming. Thick fog from the cold water envelops me.
At my feet the water foams and hisses. Only a strong current keeps the water
from freezing here. My resting place shakes and trembles as the pieces of ice
strike it. These are finally pulled under by the force of the current and I can
feel them drifting about under my feet. Suddenly another large piece breaks
off and I must retreat quickly in order not to be too close to the water. In a
few minutes there is wild chaos where I stood. . . . I shall try my luck again
tomorrow. I want to bring back one seal. . . .
February 15, Anarnitung Today I again went hunting seals at Sarbuxdjuax, but with no better luck. The only seal I saw tore himself from my
spear and disappeared under the ice. Today I hunted just as an Eskimo, with
a spear and all that goes with it. I sat beside the water just as patiently as
they do .... Oxaitung was the only one who caught anything, two seals,
which I immediately acquired. Metik was here this evening and told an endlessly long story. . . . This morning my young friend Toka'ving brought me
seal for which he wanted tobacco which I gave him. . . . As you see Marie,
I am now a true Eskimo. I live as they do, hunt with them and belong to the
men of Anamitung. I have hardly any European food left, eat only seal and
drink coffee. I hope in this way soon to have acquired a sufficient number of
seal so that I can soon start on my journey to Nettilling. Although seal
hunting bores me dreadfully, I do it as it is the only way of obtaining what I
need. I must get away this month. Perhaps I shall still get dogs from Padli.
That would be a piece of good luck-to be finally rid of the dog problem.
February 16, Anarnitung A strong N. W. gale has been blowing since
last night. However, the sleds set out for Sarbuxdjuax this morning. Through
a misunderstanding the sled on which I intended to travel had left. I tried in
vain to catch up with it. I had to tum back and remain indoors the rest of
the day. Actually I lost nothing because of this. The Eskimo brought back
nothing, so I certainly would not have caught a thing. They said "SarbukdU<lk
komailiadlu udlums" which means "Sarbuxdjuax today difficult" and I imagine
that the wind which became stronger during the day was very trying for the
hunters .... I listened to stories and wrote down words. My glossary is really
growing, but it is about time I started it. I wish I could draw well so as to
draw you a picture of our iglu. You can see what the outside looks like from
photographs, but not what the inside is like. Picture to yourself a room about
41
"Eskimo awaiting return of seal to blowhole," reads the caption of the Central Eskimo engrav
ing (fig. 399) based on this studio photograph of Boas in his caribou suit. Photograph by J.
l-lulsenbeck, Minden, 1885 (?).Courtesy American Philosophical Society.
42
DouGLAS CoLE
twelve feet in diameter. Vaulted ceiling lined with sealskin-in the back of
the house there is a bank of snow about three feet high with a smooth surface
for living-in the back also a big pile of all kinds of things, skins clothing
etc. and all the dear lnuit!-two other equally high snow banks on which
the lamps stand. The kettles hang over the lamps-above this for drying a
network of skins, which is full of clothes, day and night ... on one side the
provisions, on the other the garbage-it is difficult to accustom oneself to
this sight. In the space that remains, about six feet in length and four in
width, there is a large block of snow which is used to close the door at
night-usually by two or three people, but I have seen six or seven ....
There are one or two small iglus which serve to keep the cold away and are
also used for storage. And then you should see these long-haired fellows sitting here. Their hands are usually folded over their bellies, their heads usually bent sideways, they talk, laugh, and sing. Once in a while someone seizes
a knife and cuts off a large piece of seal meat which he devours. If it is frozen
it is chopped up and eaten by all, including myself, with the greatest enjoyment. Strangely enough, while eating and talking they almost always look at
the wall and not at one another. There is one old man named Metik (duck)
whom I especially enjoy. As soon as he sees me coming he calls out "asshoyoutioli!," which means "how are you," and follows, in the most beautiful pidgin English used by the Eskimo who know English words, with all kinds of
stories. Thus I live day after day. No wonder I long for sensible conversation
and for someone who really understands me! Unfortunately this time I did
not bring a book to read, so I cannot help myself. I read all the advertisement
and everything else on one page of the Kolnische Zeitung. In four days I shall
have been away eight months. I have heard from none of you for four and a
half months ....
February 17, Anamitung A bad day was followed by a worse one. There
is a storm from the northwest and one cannot see ahead ten steps. And it is
unpleasantly cold. So the Eskimo stayed home and are lazing about all day.
Do you think it is possible for me to write under these circumstances? As
soon as I start, I throw the book to the ground impatiently. Everything appears so unpleasant. Everything I start turns out badly and it will not take
much to make me feel very depressed. If I only can get home this year and
find you, my Marie. My heart yearns for you, my dearest possession.
February 18, Anarnitung Another day lost. In spite of the fact that it
is still blowing badly, we went to the water hole. The Eskimo have to go
because they have been half-starved as a result of the poor hunting season.
You should see how greedily they devour the last of my dry bread, which I
have given them. But I cannot feed the forty-three people of this settlement
during the days of hunger. [After having come to Anarnitung to secure seals
for the anticipated dog-team, B0as "instead of being able to complete my
43
provisions, ... had to furnish supplies to the starving people" (Boas 1885b:l4).]
I give two sick children and Oxaitung's family everything they need. Oxaitung has taken another wife, but she does not live in his iglu. This morning
we went to the water hole. When we got there it was still high tide and we
had to wait until it went down. As it was not getting to be low tide, the
nirrent was weak, and new ice was forming. So it took until one o'clock
hcfore the ice was so that we could get to the water. And so we sat there and
nil that we accomplished was that all of us combined saw one seal. Some
Eskimo who had been at another water hole brought home three small seals.
Since it gets worse every day I shall go to Nexemiarbing tomorrow to talk to
Piera again and then go back to Kikkerton.
February 19, Nexemiarbing Last night I finally collected a team of dogs.
I left this morning at about nine o'clock. I have to suffer a great deal because
of the sickness that is prevalent here. I know that many Eskimo are unwilling
to deal with me although they do not dare to show it openly. None of them
wanted to lend me dogs, but when I asked them they did not dare refuse. It
was a horrible day, storm from the north in the morning, a little better in the
afternoon. We arrived here before sunset. As the men returned from seal
hunting, I again had a most unpleasant surprise. The dog sickness has again
hroken out and Piera, on whom I depended most, has only seven dogs! I
really do not know what is going to happen! ...
[Returning again to Kikkerton on February 20, Boas found that Weike's
foot was better, collected some more stories and "learned something about
Turgnaing, the spirit of the Eskimos" (BFP: Field Journal 2/21184). From
Kikkerton he made an overnight trip with Mutch to Warham Island to survey
the south coast . . . . A few days later he travelled. to Naujateling to visit
Roach on his ship wintered there. He found the poor man's feet badly frozen
from a night spent on the ice, and returned to Kikkerton greatly depressed.
All his exploratory plans had been frustrated by the poor seal catch, by bad
weather, but most of all by the devastating dog disease. He had finally given
up even the smallest hope for a great western trip to the shores of Foxe
Basin.] ...
March 7, Kikkerton I have not been able to write for days, my Marie.
I was not able to find a place on the boat to which I could retire and speak
to you. I must find comfort in you from the troubles and cares that worry me
day and night. It's easy to say that one should keep one's head up, but that's
really very hard with this wretched dog disease that endangers even my trip
hack from Padli. Oh! Marie I could not bear not to return this summer. You
are waiting for me and I long for you day and night. I must see you and rest
in your arms from all these cares and fears. The sickness has reigned here
unceasingly for a month and Piera, with whom I was to travel west, has lost
seven of his ten dogs so that I have given up all hope . . . . It will be impos-
44
DouoLAs CoLE
sible for me to leave here for Padli without help. You can imagine how unbearable it would be to sit around here all summer doing nothing and with
no prospect of leaving here in the fall. For days now I feel so depressed and
hopeless that I must come to you for courage. I simply cannot stay here,
Marie. You draw me with such a force. I must press you to my heart. Oh, I
hardly know myself what I am writing. Now you see what has become of my
much boasted of courage . . . . You see what a weakling your Franz is! I scold
myself a thousand times but cannot rid myself of the weight that rests on my
heart. . . . Will you think less of me, Marie, because of it? You must know I
am distressed by the thought that I might have to be without you for another
whole year. . . . You cannot imagine how difficult it is to live, without speaking to a sensible person for so long a time. The few moments I have allotted
to myself you may judge from my words to you. I am very often unable to add
a word to you in my dry daily reports. I might do it more often, but when I
have to listen to the conversation between Jimmy Mutch and his wife, such
insipid and often vulgar talk, the pencil drops from my hand. How can I
visualize your pure image in these surroundings? I am often revolted by everything I see and hear about me. Nevertheless Mutch is a comparatively decent
man. I must do him justice. In seventeen years of almost uninterrupted living
in this country, he has learned much. He is honest and open and does not
try to hide his weaknesses. But the people on the American ship! It revolts
me to have anything to do with them, but I am more than glad that I am not
condemned to spend the entire winter with them. Only the second helmsman, a German-American, is a good and acceptable person. I am really sorry
for him that he has to live and work a whole year in such company.... I
realize more surely from day to day that I am not meant to live in loneliness.
I need people very much, people who really have a right to the name. I feel
much better now that I have poured out my heart. It seems to me as though
the weight on my heart had become lighter. . . .
[From the depth of his despair, new hopes arose. Two men arrived from
Saumia, the area at the tip of Cumberland Peninsula, and reported an abundance of dogs in their settlements, which, like Padli on Davis Strait, was
untouched by the devastating epidemic. A journey there promised also to be
of interest because the southern part of Cumberland Sound was completely
unknown. With the grand plan for exploration of Foxe Basin's Baffin shore
finally abandoned, he could tum to possibilities closer to hand. "Now the
most unhappy time of my stay in the Sound was past; from now on my luck
turned favorable again" (Boas 1885b:l4-15). He left on March 12, climbing
the pass at the head of Anartuajuin Fjord and descending to K'airoliktung
Fjord on Davis Strait.)
March 19, Ukiadliving I have never yet written from so far away from
home as I now am. I am in Ukiadliving, on the coast of the Davis Strait,
45
where I went to buy dogs. It was a difficult trip, five nights in a cold iglu,
until I at last arrived here. You cannot picture to yourself what cries and
ustonishment greeted me here. I am the first European to have visited this
rnrner [cf. Boas 1885b: 16]. Fortunately my business went off better than I
had expected. I now own ten dogs and therewith the means to leave Cumlwrland Sound. I hope I can get a few more so that I shall have a good team.
March 20, Ukiadliving I went out yesterday morning in order to explore
11 little of the coast to the north and at the same time to try out my dogs and
1wrhaps return or exchange some of them. . . . I had expected to find this
Nide of the Davis Strait rather accurate on the map, but I cannot discover
from it where I am. I really think, Marie, I have never experienced a spring
rhat has made such a springlike impression on me .... Everything still applars wintery, but. . . . you should see how wonderfully the sun shines on
l'Verything; how pleasing it is to feel the warm rays! We have, of course, seen
rhe sun all winter long, but now we feel its warmth and it gives me the
impression that any day now the ice will begin to melt. Nine months ago I
llft Hamburg and seven more and I shall be with you .... You once asked
me how I would be when I returned. I know now that I will be the same as
when I left. What I have seen and experienced here has not changed me,
lll'rhaps made me a little more sensitive to all the beauty and goodness that
is to be found at home, and also I take greater pleasure in associating with
others than formerly.... In another month my wanderings start. At that
rirne I wish to go up Kingnait Fjord so that at the beginning of May I will be
in Padli. Then I shall hang up your picture in my iglu, where I shall remain
fiir some time. It is going to be hard work to take all my things over land to
Padli!
March 29, Nexemiarbing [Catching up on a gap in the diary, Boas tells
rhat he drove his team as far north as Sakiak Fjord, then made a relatively
l'asy trip back to Kikkerton. There he found a pleasant surprise: some Padli
Inuit had come to the Gulf, and Mutch had bought five dogs from them.
Equally pleasant was the news that two American ships had visited Padli the
previous summer.] ... I felt my blood stream to my heart as I again was
ahle to hope to go to you! 0, Marie, how happy I shall be if my good luck
leads me to an American vessel. It does not sail to New London but to St.
John's in Newfoundland, but that would not bother me. St. John's is not
outside the world as this country here is and a few days would take me to
you. I have made a heavy line under the first of November in all my journals
and calendars. That is the day I will be in New York or in Minden. Six
months more in this country. On the twenty-seventh I began to pack my
things. I underlined that day in red on my calendar, the day on which I began
to prepare for my journey home ....
[On March 28 Boas left Kikkerton with Signa on an abbreviated version
46
DouoLAs CoLE
of his original western exploration. "I wanted at least to see the longed-for
Lake Nettilling and to catch a glimpse of the form of the land west of the
Gulf" (Boas 1885b:l6-17). Reaching the lake on April 1, Boas, always very
conscious of anniversaries, made the most of the coincidence with his visit a
year previous to Stuttgart.]
April 1, Kangia How could I let this day go by without writing you at
least a few words. Our thoughts today are centered on the same event, the
day on which we last saw one another.... Doesn't it strike you as remarkable that today, without any intention on my part, I am to reach the so
longed-for Lake Kennedy? And it seems as though it again will be a beautiful
day. Yes, even here, in the midst of snow and ice, it is spring. The sun shines
so warm and I feel spring in my heart.... Today I am writing from the upper
end of the long fjord which forms the way to the interior and today I should
see the lake ....
April 1, evening, Nettilling ... At last! But here at my goal, I tum
around again, right where I had thought I would really begin. Is it not strange,
Marie, to arrive here today and that I must tum back, without accomplishing
that which I had wanted? But last year I made up for what I missed while this
year I am saying goodbye to this country forever. Off and away. You, beloved,
need not wait because of the stupid Lake Kennedy which will still be here
for someone else to visit. . . . This morning we drove up from Kangia past a
chain of lakes, separated from one another by narrow strips of land. Low
granite hills and steep cliffs surround these basins of water. Before we started
every strap of walrus skin on the sleds was carefully put away. The Eskimo
are not allowed to take walrus skin into the land of the caribou.
April 3, Kangia Since there are reports of other kinds of rock in this
neighborhood, I proceeded for another hour but found only a red variety of
granite. We turned back, the weather was beautiful and before eight in the
evening we reached Kangia. Three times during the day we were delayed
because we hunted caribou .... We were so near the first herd that I hoped
we would be able to shoot, but then the dogs broke loose from the sled and
the caribou fled. Fortunately Signa could hold on to the sled, but the dogs
could not be held. The last dog broke loose, but fortunately returned in a
quarter of an hour. Last night when Signa wanted to cut seal meat for the
dogs, the ax handle broke so that I could not feed them until this morning.... You should see me now-dirty. Since I left Kikkerton, no water has
touched my face or hand-it is too precious-and I have been burned black
by the sun, so that I scarcely recognize myself.... [Arriving in Kikkerton
on April 7, Boas moved some provisions up Kingnait Fjord in anticipation
of his trip to Davis Strait, attempted some more surveys of the west coast of
the Sound, and made another trip to lmigen to secure seals.]
47
April 22, lmigen ... The dog sickness has again appeared in Kikkerron, but my team has been spared. I hope this worrying time will soon be
11ver and then I shall go onwards to you in good spirits! ... Time is now
fleeing too rapidly-on account of bad luck, lack of dogs and bad weather, I
have not finished my work here, but at least I know that I have done what I
n lllld. During the last two months I have slept in a bed only about seven
days, the rest of the time I never took off my clothes! ... It would be terrible
If I had to stay here another year. I have plenty of food but I could not travel
htcause my trade goods would be used up.
April 23, Kikkerton With hard snow we proceeded quite rapidly and I
11111 entering Kikkerton for the last time. You have no idea how boring it is
to cross the Sound when there is nothing to see but snow and ice, no land,
1111 variety on the whole long route. Only the blinding white of the snow
which hurts the eyes so much that one does not keep them open. So far I
have luckily escaped snow blindness. I am very careful but every day I am
ufraid that it might happen to me. My eyes hurt me most of the time but that
Is not worth mentioning. . . . [Although utterly sick of travelling on the
Sound, he made one last trip, to Nuvujen, to complete his census and map.
After intense preparation and packing, Boas then left Kikkerton on May 6
fi1r Davis Strait, where he planned to board a ship. "Cordially I said goodbye
to the whalers whose friendly support had been so valuable all winter. From
now on ... I would have to depend on what little I could carry on my sled
uml what I could secure from hunting" (Boas 1885b: 17-18). Signa would
Ul'company them to the strait and then return to Kikkerton, leaving Boas
und Weike (travelling for the first time since his frostbite) dependent on the
I lavis Strait natives for whatever guidance and assistance they needed.)
May 8, Niutang . . . Up to this time we have had the most glorious
weather, the sky is blue, the sun warm and one hears the water trickling
down the rocks. Even the snow on top of the ice is beginning to melt under
the rays of the sun or at least to soften. I drove the sled all day long without
Wl'aring my sealskin jacket. A woolen shirt sufficed to keep me completely
warm .... We are now near the end of Kingnait. Here is a deep valley where
there used to be a large settlement. One can still see the remains of the huts
where, a long time ago, according to folklore, Tudniks and Eskimo had lived
lol-(ether until the first were driven out. Many tales and traditions derive from
rhis place ... of the quarrels of the Eskimo of the west coast of the sound
und their battles with one another.
IThe journey was very arduous. The ice on Kingnait Fjord, pressed tolll'thcr into great blocks, made travel difficult, and the overland portion required heavy hauling over a series of steep terraces. "The labor required to
usl'end these heights was so unspeakably difficult that I was forced to leave
48
DouaLAs CoLE
the bulk of my provisions and possessions at Tomateling canyon. If my provisions had already been trifling, the little I now took with me could only be
regarded as emergency supplies to supplement poor hunting" (Boas 1885b:l9).
On May 18, after eleven days of heavy packing, they reached the head of
Padli Fjord and, on May 22, Padloping, the settlement at its mouth.]
May 25, Padloping My dear Marie: If I have not written for many days,
there are good reasons. I was at first too tired out, when I was on land, to
write much, and now for days I have been snowblind. Even today it is difficult to write because of my eyes, but at least I can make the attempt. I am
now at the mouth of Padli Fjord. Tomorrow I shall go further north. Thank
goodness the most difficult part of this journey has been conquered and in a
few days I can reach the place to which ships come. I would rather embark
and sail home tomorrow. The Eskimo here tell me that the "Wolf," the only
American ship that comes here, is always the first to arrive. How happy I
shall be to see the smoke from her funnel! . . . The ice may still upset my
plans .... It would be too great a stroke of bad luck if, just this year, ships
could not get through! . . .
May 28, Padloping . . . How many disappointments this year has brought
me, but you, my only beloved, have helped me to bear them all and now my
troubles here seem so insignificant, since I know that you are mine. Sometimes I look back on what I have accomplished through the eyes of my colleagues who sit at home and criticize and I find, without overestimating myself, that it is quite a considerable accomplishment that deserves to be
recognized. I have told you often enough what I think of it, that I consider
the fame awarded to an explorer of strange lands of little worth, one is nothing more than a handyman! But I can recognize a field worthy of a man's
labors and when I strive for my ideals, with or without success, you, my
Marie, help me .... My work now is mere child's play in comparison to that
of the winter. As soon as the sun shines it will be as warm as at home. I have
only three more fjords to observe before I reach the harbor into which the
ships come.
June 5, K'exertuxdjuax I hope you are not angry with me, my Marie,
that I write so infrequently. I really cannot help it for I am either snowblind
or dead tired from travelling. I always drive my own dogs now and after I
have been travelling ten hours over the soft snow, I am glad to sleep after I
have organized my notes .... Shall I tell you about the last few days? One
is like the other. Snowblindness, bad weather, and deep snow bother me
endlessly.... It really is wretched how my big travel plans have shrunk. But
I must be satisfied. Oh! Marie, when I shall think back on this time, with all
its sufferings and cares and joys, it will probably seem like a long dream. And
I think it will seem that way to you too, becaue you had to think of me so
far from home.
49
IWith Sanguja, a Padli Inuit who was his almost constant companion and
uuide on Davis Strait, Boas and Weike moved northwest along the strait.
Travel conditions were terrible in the thawing snow and at times they reKorted to travelling at night when there was a firm surface. On June 16 they
urrived at ldjuniving, a settlement on a harbor frequented by trading vessels.
l\t ms was overjoyed at seeing the Eskimo busy preparing oil and pelts for the
traders. "Everything is aimed at the arrival of the ships and I cannot believe
they will disappoint us this year." There was still work to do, however, bemuse he wanted to survey the coast as far as Cape Henry Kater. The next
month, to and from Siorartijung, his most northerly point, was an extremely
difficult time. Heavy fog, spring snowstorms, a face-swelling toothache,
snowblindness and days without food for men and dogs plagued the journey.
"I do not think I shall ever in my life forget horrible Home Bay!" he wrote
on July 1. It was the worst time of his entire year. Partial compensation came
on July 4 when he found a man at Niaxonaujang, "probably the last new
Eskimo I shall meet," who came from lgluling "and has often travelled along
the coast of Foxe Channel all the way to Nettilling." This was a welcome
n mfirmation of his travel route thesis.
The impending end of his travels gave him comfort. "You cannot imagine
how happy I will be no longer to have to sit on a sled." In mid-July he settled
down at ldjuniving to work on his ethnographic material while anxiously
awaiting the coming of a ship. Finally, on August 19 a Dundee whaler was
seen, then lost in the fog before it could be reached. "This was a bitter
disappointment, yet its presence gave a comforting certainty that the whaling
fleet had reached the coast" (Boas 1885b:21). On August 26 two ships were
reported anchored at the edge of the ice. The dogs were quickly harnessed
and, after several hours' travel over the difficult ice, they reached the ships,
two Dundee vessels. Both captains welcomed them and offered return passage. The next day the Wolf, under Captain John Burnett, arrived. Since she
was sailing to St. John's almost immediately, Boas unhesitatingly chose her.
I le reached the Newfoundland port on September 7. His trip from there to
New York was frustratingly slow, but he arrived on the twenty-first and was
reunited with Marie Krackowizer at Lake George two days later.]
Judged in terms of Boas' original intentions, the expedition was a failure.

"Fortune has favored me but little," he wrote as he left Cumberland Sound,
"none of the hopes I had when I arrived here have been fulfilled" (BFP: FB/
parents 4/30/84). His late arrival was an initial, if not entirely un~JfP$Cted,
setback; both weather and hunting were exceptionally bad aU-:"{iottri; abp"Y,e
all, the death of so many dogs denied him access to the oni:f ~ans of ~rci:fo::
transportation. But despite these reversals, he could be sJi'~fied wit~ltis ~~-
50
DouGLAS CoLE
suits. He had made an accurate survey of most of Cumberland Sound and

much of Davis Strait, all previously inaccurately rendered. Able to survey
Lake Nettilling only sketchily and the rest of the interior not at all, he nevertheless secured sufficient information to draw a close approximation of the
actual outline of the interior lakes and the entire coast and to conclude that
Foxe Channel was a basin. When his geographical monograph, Baffin-Land,
was published in 1885, Georg Gerland described it as among "the best of
Arctic researches that we possess," and among "the most distinguished geographical works of recent years" (Gerland 1888:600-602).
His ethnographic results, though completed by April 1886, were not published as The Central Eskimo until 1888. The monograph reflected fairly his
ethnological data-gathering in its emphasis upon human geography (anthropogeography), the description of subsistence activities and material culture,
and the recording of traditions and songs. He gave almost no attention to
social structure and only a little to ceremonial and religious life. His work in
linguistics was not published until 1894, and was by his own account "defective and incomplete": having assumed that missionaries had already given a
sufficient picture of the language, he was "not clearly conscious of the importance of linguistic studies during the entire trip" (Boas 1894:97). Nevertheless, within its scope and context, his ethnography was sophisticated and
sagacious.
Retrospectively, of course, the most significant aspect of Boas' experience
in Baffin Island was his ethnographic immersion among the Inuit. His life
and reputation were to be made in anthropology, and this was his initiation.
A shift of interest was already evident by the end of the Cumberland Sound
trip: "My work among the Eskimo satisfies me more than my travels" (BFP:FB/
parents 4/30/84). Participation in the life of the Inuit also sharpened his
social sense and his belief in the equality of virtue among peoples. The kindness and sensitivity of the Eskimo, the sympathetic tact that they demonstrated in their personal relationships, gave proof that inner character, their
herzensbildung, was far more significant than the gloss of civilization and
learning.
All the more regrettable, then, was the inevitability of the destruction of
the Cumberland Sound Inuit. Already they had shrunken in number from
thousc>nds to hundreds. It was important "to save what can yet be saved" of
their tales and customs (Boas 1885b). While Boas did not cease being a
geographer, he began to see the tasks of ethnography as "more pressing" (RBP:
FB/Bell 3/19/86). The shift of his priorities from geography to anthropology
was coincident with a movement of his ethnographic interests from the Eskimo to their southern and western neighbors. Although he continued to
publish and even to direct research on the Eskimo for years, it was not long
51
niter his return to Germany that he interrupted, almost happily, his work on
"the eternal Eskimo" (BFP: FB/parents 1/25/86) for a quick study of a Bella
( :oola touring troupe. This and other influences turned his attention to the
Northwest Coast of America (Cole n.d.; cf. Stocking 1974:87-88), and in
the fall of 1886, he took leave of his announced courses at the University of
Berlin to return to America for his second field trip, this time to British
Columbia (cf. Rohner 1969). Marrying Marie Krackowizer on March 10,
1887, he was thenceforth to reside in the United States.
REFERENCES CITED
Ahhes, H. 1884. Die deutsche Nordpolar-Expedition nach dem Cumberland-Sunde.
Globus 46:294-96, 312-15, 320-22, 343-45, 365-68.
- - . 1890. Die Eskimos des Cumberlandgolfes. In Die intemationale Polarforschung, 1882-1883: Die deutsche Expeditionen und ihre Ergebnisse, ed. G. Neumayer.
Vol. 2: Beschreibende Naturwissenschaft, 1-61. Berlin.
BFP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Boas, F. 1883a. Ober die Wohnsitze der Neitchillik-Eskimos. Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin. Ser. 3, 18:222-33.
- - - . 1883b. Im Eise des Nordens. Berliner Tageblatt, Nov. 4.
- - . 1883c. Aus dem Eise des Nordens. Berliner Tageblatt, Nov. 25.
- - . 1884a. A journey in Cumberland Sound and on the West Shore of Davis
Strait in 1883 and 1884. Am. Geog. Soc. N. Y., Bui. 16:242-72.
- - . 1884b. Die Eskimos des Cumberland-Sundes und der Davisstrasse. Berliner
Tageblatt, Nov. 2.
- - . 1884c. Reise nach Paguistu. Berliner Tageblatt, Nov. 9.
- - . 1885a. Baffin-Land: Geographische Ergebnisse einer in den ]ahren 1883 und 1884
ausgefuhrten Forschungsreise (Erganzungsheft No. 80 zu Petermanns Mitteilungen).
Gotha.
- - - . 1885b. Unter dem Polarkreise. New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung, Feb. 1.
- - . 1888. The Central Eskimo. 6th Ann. Rept. Bur. Ethn. Washington.
- - - . 1889. On alternating sounds. In Stocking 1974:72-76.
- - - . 1894. Der Eskimo-Oialekt des Cumberland-Sundes. Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 24:97-114.
BPP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Cole, D. N.d. Franz Boas and the Bella Coola in Berlin. Northwest Anth. Res. Notes.
In press.
EEN. See under Manuscript Sources.
Freeman, J. F. 1966. A guide to manuscripts relating to the American Indian in the library
of the American Philosophical Society. Philadelphia.
Gerland, G. 1888. Review of Baffin-Land, by Franz Boas. Deutsche Litteraturzeitung
(April 21 ):600-602.
52
DouGLAS CoLE
Kluckhohn, C. & 0. Prufer. 1959. Influences during the formative years. In The
anthropology of Franz Boas: Essays on the centennial of his birth, ed. W. Goldschmidt,
4-28. San Francisco.
Neumayer, G. 1891. Die intemationale Polarforschung, 1882-1883: Die deutsche Expeditionen und ihre Ergebnisse. Vol. I: Geschichlicher Theil. Berlin.
RBP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Rohner, R. P., ed. 1969. The ethnography of Franz Boas: Letters and diaries of Franz
Boas written on the Northwest Coast from 1886 to 1931. Trans. H. Parker. Chicago.
Stocking, G. W., Jr. 1968. From physics to ethnology. In Race, culture, and evolution:
Essays in the history of anthropology, 133-60. New York.
- - . 1974. The shaping of American anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas reader.
New York.
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
The letter-diary to Marie Krackowizer [Boas) is contained in the Boas Family
Papers (cited herein as BFP) in the Franz Boas Collection at the American
Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. The BFP also contain a shorter letterdiary from Boas to his parents, his Baffinland field journal, and a letter-diary
kept by Marie. Additional relevant materials are included in the Boas Professional Papers (cited as BPP), and the Franz Boas Collection of American
Indian Linguistics (Freeman 1966:20, 161) includes his "Eskimo Ethnographic Notes from Baffinland" (cited as EEN). In addition to the American
Philosophical Society sources, I have cited material from volume four of the
Robert Bell Papers (RBP) in the Public Archives of Canada. I would like to
thank Franziska Boas and the American Philosophical Society (the holders
of the literary property rights of the Boas manuscripts) for graciously permitting the publication of the letter-diary and the accompanying photographs,
as well as the manuscript librarians at the Society, Stephen Catlett and Beth
Carroll, for their assistance in the project.
ETHNOGRAPHIC CHARISMA
AND SCIENTIFIC ROUTINE
Cushing and Fewkes in the American Southwest,
1879-1893
CURTIS HINSLEY
In one of the swift closing scenes of The La.st of the Mahicans, Uncas stands
hcfore his Huron captors, anticipating death yet stolidly disdaining their taunts
and tortures. As James Fenimore Cooper presents the picture, "in the very
center of the lodge, immediately under an opening that admitted the twinkling light of one or two stars, stood Uncas, calm, elevated, and collected. . . . Marble could not be colder, calmer, or steadier than [his] countenance . . . ." (1826:288, 293). Uncas would soon die at the hands of the
treacherous Magua, and thus the noble Red race of America would be symholically extinguished, not by White civilization but by its own dark side of
undisciplined bloodlust. As Cooper's phrases indicate, for White Americans
the marbling and bronzing of the American Indian began at an early date;
the transformation of the aborigine from historical actor to aesthetic object,
as unfeeling as stone, was a significant cultural exercise that lasted well into
the twentieth century. From the cigar store to the United States Mint, from
statuary to small change, the artistic abstraction of the Native American
served to deflect a painful history of violence and injustice.
Given public preference for sentiment and stereotype, it is hardly surpris-
Curtis M. Hinsley teaches American history and history of science at Colgate University. He is currently writing a book on the history of anthropology in Boston,
1860-1920, centering on the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. With
Lea S. McChesney he is also co-authoring a narrative history of the Hemenway
Southwestern Archaeological Expedition under Frank Hamilton Cushing (1886-1889).
He is the author of Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1910.
53
54
CURTIS HINSLEY
ing that anthropological fieldwork emphasizing attention to the historical

and ethnographic integrity of specific peoples did not find fertile conditions
for growth in nineteenth-century America. Some serious efforts occurred: the
observations of Lewis Cass and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in the upper Michigan peninsula of the 1830s; Albert Gallatin's promotion, through the first
American Ethnological Society, of historical and linguistic inquiries; the early
work of Lewis Henry Morgan; the paintings of George Catlin and Charles
Bird King; and the less-heralded labors of missionaries such as Stephen Riggs
and Cyrus Byington. Still, not until the last quarter of the previous century
did individuals begin to undertake fieldwork in North America in a conscious, sustained effort to record, study, and understand the remaining Native
American peoples. The organizational center of this development was the
Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), the most important regional focus
became the Southwest, and the leading though certainly not sole figure was
Frank Hamilton Cushing. It was among the anthropologists working in the
Southwest, led by Cushing in the 1880s, that the patterns and styles of North
American fieldwork first began clearly to emerge.
"Their history is, to some extent, our history," Schoolcraft wrote of the
Iroquois in 1846 as he urged study of Native American peoples. For its handful of nineteenth-century enthusiasts, anthropology in the United States always possessed psychological and political bearing on the national purpose.
In defending their enthusiasm, they commonly cited two goals, one practical
and the other scientific: more efficient and humane government policy, and
better knowledge of civilization through study of its antecedent forms. John
Wesley Powell used precisely this dual argument in his successful lobbying to
establish the Bureau of Ethnology in 1879; variations on the theme were
common. Beneath the practical and scientific justifications, though, lay a
deeper stratum of purpose, best expressed by Schoolcraft, that lent a unique
style to American fieldwork in these years. The distinguishing element was a
sense of identity based on shared historical mission and common stewardship
of the continent. "It has been given to us, to carry out scenes of improvement, and of morals and intellectual progress, which providence in its profound workings, has deemed it best for the prosperity of man, that we, not
they, should be entrusted with. We have succeeded to their inheritance"
(Schoolcraft 1846:28-29). Understanding our predecessors in this teleological history became an integral part of the burden of American progress.
This conviction placed Native Americans within the national experience
by definition, and it determined that, however ignorant or cruel popular
attitudes or public policy toward the Indian might become, the dominant
culture could never achieve complete separation of identity. By the same
token, early North American anthropologists often carried into the field more
than a sense of studying "savagery" or "mankind"; some took as well a spirit
CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST
55
of exchange, which in extremis could shade into confusion of personal identity, but which commonly encouraged liberality of judgment: "I mean to say
that by thoroughly studying and revealing the life and traits of the Indian,
we cannot fail, if happy in our mission, of exciting interest in him where
none existed before; cannot fail of showing him to be more human than we
had supposed him, more capable of being made usefuler [sic) and better than
it has been supposed possible-... "(HCP: FHC/Miss Cushing 2/16/84).
While life in the field is an individual experience, it is institutionally
filtered, and it is extremely important to consider the roles of sponsoring
institutions in differing historical contexts in accounting for the nature of
fieldwork, as experienced and as reported. For example, prior to Cushing's
famous sojourn (1879-84) at Zuni pueblo, ethnographic data based on extended exposure had often come from missionaries, but their purposes and
roles usually inhibited intimate or sympathetic observation. When the Dutch
anthropologist Herman F. C. Ten Kate visited Zuni in 1883, he noted that
whereas the Cushing household occupied the lower level of the governor's
house, and the local trader, Douglas D. Graham, had his trading post in a
small street in the pueblo, the local missionary lived outside the pueblo.
Edmund Wilson, arriving sixty years later, recorded that "the present Catholic priest in the pueblo is said to feel that he has made some progress, now
that the Zuii.is, after a quarter of a century, when they meet him out of doors,
do not spit at him" (Wilson 1956:13). True, Zuni has always been a notably
resistant community (Pandey 1972), but such instances suggest inherent ethnographic limits to the missionary endeavor. Conversely, maverick individuals, such as Thomas Kearn and Alexander Stephen among the Hopis, or
James G. Swan on the Northwest Coast, who settled down to trade, live,
and intermarry with Native Americans, lacked the institutional means to
communicate their valuable knowledge to public or professional audiences.
Again, the patterns of nineteenth-century exploration and settlement of
the trans-Mississippi West encouraged sweeping accounts of the country for
politicians and public, and postponement of narrower studies, whether of
geological or cultural configurations. The survey, too, was an institutional
form, and the chief preoccupation of the territorial survey years ( 1865 to
1879) was to determine the boundaries and resources of the usable continent.
The free-wheeling, competing post-Civil War surveys of Powell, Wheeler,
King, and Hayden lasted little more than a decade, giving way in 1879 to a
consolidated U.S. Geological Survey that soon became regionally and
professionally fragmented. Similarly the new Bureau of Ethnology, established with the Geological Survey and placed in the Smithsonian Institution,
carried within it the surveying and mapping tradition-but also the rudiments of particularistic ethnography. In this and other ways the organizations
directed by John Wesley Powell were important transitional mediums (Hins-
56
CURTIS HINSLEY
ley 1981:151-55), demonstrating that while institutions reflect intentions,

they also may develop new purposes along the way.
Cushing had few models for his fieldwork, but many visions and ambitions. Comparing himself to a bee indiscriminately in search of honey, he
wrote to his cousin in 1884: "I have to have knowledge of savage life, and it
matters less to me where I find it, than it does in what measure I find it.
Zufii, therefore, while I confess it to be a patch of thorns in the side of a
civilized being, is attractive to me because of the satisfaction it gives to my
craving after knowledge of savage lore and life" (HCP: FHC/Miss Cushing 3/
16/84). On a subsequent occasion Cushing explained his obsession with the
Southwest by recalling a recurrent dream he had had while living in a tower
of the Smithsonian Building in 1876. Dangling from the edge of a mountain,
he sees a "pagan altar" below and a Kachina doll at his feet, and feels "awed,
beyond measure, yet happy to the verge of ecstasy":
It may be that the chill of a windy winter night caused me to dream of wild
desolate lands, the height of my tower home, of mountains . . . and my studies
among the relics and idols of primitive man gathered the world over of an idol
stranger than any I had studied.... Be all this as it may, my eyes were first
turned toward Zuni by a vision of the night ...
(HCP: FHC/Lecture notes c. 1890)
Typically, Cushing here personalized history. In actuality it was Spencer Baird,

director of the National Museum, who first turned Cushing toward Zuni.
Between 1876 and 1879, Cushing catalogued collections for Baird in the
National Museum, awaiting an appropriate field opportunity and lamenting
the "socially dead, morally dead, intellectually dead" atmosphere of Washington (HCP: FHC/Mr. Leech c. 1878). Finally Baird assigned him as the
Museum's representative on the BAE's first southwestern expedition, under
James Stevenson. The instructions to Stevenson were broadly ethnological
and archeological, the approach was that of a survey, and the expedition
model was quasi-military-an "ethnological campaign," Baird called it (MCSP:
SB/JS 7/10/83). Baird sought material collections for the Museum, while
Powell, following Lewis H. Morgan's most recent theories, wanted the expedition to study pueblo architecture and domestic arrangements.
Unexpectedly, Cushing chose to stay at Zuni when the rest of the Stevenson party moved on to other sites. The stories of Cushing's physical sufferings
and gradual acceptance among some groups in the pueblo, his initiation into
the Priesthood of the Bow, and the bestowing of his Zuni name, Medicine
Flower, have become part of the folklore of American anthropology, and
have justified the claim that he pioneered the method of participant-observation
in North America (Brandes 1965; cf. Mark 1976 and Green 1979). The
57
initial weeks in the home of the Zuni governor, Palowaihtiwa, were ex

trcmely difficult for Cushing, due to lack of communication, physical disrnmfort, and barely palatable food. Cushing immediately realized that with' 1ut the language Zuni culture and history would remain closed to him; indeed
the corpus of his published work reflects everywhere Cushing's heavy reliance
on analysis of etymology and sound as keys to mental structures and cultural
connections. His attention to recording folktales and mythology illustrated
his conviction, shared by Franz Boas, that "the ethnologist's function supplements the historian's; [the ethnologist) is able to restore thousands of his
missing pages" (HCP: FHC/Miss Cushing 3/16/84). But all this, he saw, was
impossible without the language:
I conversed at first in broken Spanish, which after the end of two months
proving insufficient for my needs I began earnestly to study the native speech.
Whatever other accessories to my success I may have neglected I have never
neglected this. Too ill at times to write my full notes I have nevertheless set
down my little daily acquisitions in this direction and thus, word by word, I
increased my store until I [could) carry on a broken, strange mixture of Zuni
and Mexican conversation, gradually dropping the latter. . . . This as the very
first of all I have labored at incessantly, and my reward is that today at the
close of eight months' study I speak a strangely complicated tongue, not per
fectly but fluently and easily ...
(HCP: FHC/Report on the Zuni Language c. 1880)
Within a year Cushing not only had come to realize that Zuni culture was
immensely rich in social complexity, art, knowledge, and history, but he also
was convinced that behind daily appearances of pueblo life stood a coherent
system of belief. He was certain that the keys to this religious system would
unlock the riches of Zuni life and knowledge. He believed that the songs,
dances, and ritual language of the Zuni priesthood had probably retained
these keys to understanding in the most distilled and conservative form, but
that clues could be discovered in even mundane activities, such as cooking.
It is, in fact, the discovery of the importance of the mundane, in artifacts or
activities, and their complex connection to the sacred, that was a hallmark
of Cushing's ethnography. In other words, Cushing came to the vital insight-at direct variance with prevalent American attitudes at the timethat, far from being lost, Zuni history and beliefs lived on in the daily life of
the pueblo. This is what he meant when he insisted that Native Americans
were deeply "religious" peoples:
Of all the people on this continent, not excluding ourselves, the most profoundly religious-if by religion is meant fidelity to teachings and observations
that are regarded as sacred-are the American Indians .... For with them,
58
CURTIS HINSLEY
sociologic organization and government and the philosophy and daily usages
are still so closely united with religion, that all their customs, which we con
sider as absurd and useless, grow from it as naturally and directly as plants from
the soil.
(Cushing 1897: 12)
Understanding such deeply rooted patterns, he saw, required time, patience,

and sympathy. After two years at the pueblo Cushing found himself just at
the threshold of understanding:
As a consequence of my initiation I have had a world of facts opened up to
me, which I had despaired of ever reaching. I had from my former standpoint
exhausted the subject with the exception of a few details, and was preparing
to come home permanently during early January of 1882 ... but from the
present I see nothing but the most constant work, with the best of facilities for
at least four years to make my work exhaustive. . .. Indeed, my disappointment
would be almost irreparable, were I unable to study for a period almost as great,
from the inside, the life of the Zunis, as I have from the outside. After having
secured the two necessities, the absolute confidence and language of the Indian, I feel it my duty to use these necessities, or advantages, to the fullest
extent of their value, toward the end which I acquired them for.
(FHCP: FHC/S. Baird 10/12/81)
The recognition of a living history at Zuni inspired in Cushing the spirit

of mutual exchange that marked his anthropology. In 1882 he travelled east
ward with prominent Zuni men, not to impress upon them the power of
American civilization, but to share his life with them as they had done with
him. "I owe a lasting debt of gratitude to the people of Zufii," he explained:
They have been forging for me, during the past two years of doubt as to my
genuineness, the keys which enable me to open their vast and ancient treasurehouse of Ethnologic information, have treated me with strange goodness and
distinction; and in my gratitude, I ... wish to do all I can toward the amelioration of their condition, and toward convincing them that I am what I have
always claimed to be, their friend.
(FHCP: FHOJ. C. Pilling 1115/82)
The eastern tour of 1882 marked the end of Cushing's first Zuni phase and
his emergence as a figure of public notoriety and growing ambition. Appearing with the Zunis in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, he sought to promote cross-cultural understanding and at the same time to prepare alternative
institutional foundations for his anthropology. On returning to Zuni with his
White bride, Emily Magill, her sister Margaret, and a Black male cook, Cushing
did not readopt the austere lifestyle of his early months at the pueblo. Now
occupying the entire ground floor of Palowaihtiwa's adobe, the Cushing
__:.._...,... ',~:ti~'.":.
------------------+.''-~.,
. ,. . .
59
,..,...~-!i".i.-lli. .....~ .....
Cushing performing for a hometown audience, Albion, New York, c. 1890. Courtesy Swan
Library, Albion, N.Y.
household became a scene of domesticated ruggedness and cultural commingling for visiting anthropologists:
The small, dimly lit apartments present a strange jumble of Indian and Japanese artwork and Oscar Wilde's "aesthetics." The floor is covered and the walls
are hung with colorful Navaho rugs, and bear and puma skins, while above an
Oriental divan Cushing's costume as a priest of the Order of the Bow is hang-
60
CURTIS HINSLEY
ln11. h'a n pretty outfit, that colorful round shield bedecked with feathers and
the 11raccful bow and quiver of puma hide. Here your eye falls upon rifles and
revolvers, there on a bookshelf; here on a chest with fine porcelain and Zuni
pottery, over there on Japanese fans, peacock's feathers, sunflowers and multicolored Hopi baskets, which here and there decorate the walls. A soft light
shines through the small rectangular windows and bathes the picturesque interior in shimmering halftones of richness and strength.
(Ten Kate 1885:275)
Already Cushing had grown restive in the confines of BAE anthropology,

which was not sufficiently flexible to permit in official publications the poetic
form, imaginative digressions, and hyperbole that were becoming the Cushing style in thought and writing. Not surprisingly, then, as he now made a
home at Zuni Cushing also began searching for independent, permanent support for what he would call his "internal" method of ethnography-a combination of linguistics, daily observation, and intuition. Cushing was struggling with the dilemma of communicating knowledge about one culture in
the "scientific" categories of another without distorting Zuni reality. Furthermore, he recognized that it was an institutional as well as an intellectual
challenge.
He attacked the problem of institutional support by addressing various
audiences at once. Working partly through a Boston journalist, Sylvester
Baxter, he popularized his Zuni life in Century magazine, and in Boston periodicals and newspapers, while writing professionally oriented pieces as well.
In this way Cushing developed a network of support, centered in Boston,
that included such luminaries as John Fiske and Edward Everett Hale. In
1886 the efforts bore fruit. Cushing had long since been convinced through
his studies of Zuni mythology and language that the pre-Columbian history
of the Southwest, and its relationship to Central and South American cultures, could be traced. Specifically, he hypothesized that ancestors of the
Zunis had built and occupied the famed Seven Cities of Cibola referred to by
Spanish conquistadors. He decided to organize a major expedition to investigate the history of the Southwest from four directions simultaneously: ethnography, historical documentation, archeology, and physical anthropology.
In late 1886 the Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Expedition, fi.
nanced by Mary Hemenway of Boston with $25,000 a year, left for Arizona
under Cushing's direction. For two years the party-Cushing, his wife and
sister-in-law, Frederick W. Hodge, and several assistants-excavated ruins
between Tempe and Phoenix, and briefly in the vicinity of Zuni. To supplement these activities Cushing took on Adolph F. Bandelier as historian. Bandelier assiduously copied Spanish documents in Sante Fe and Mexico City in
order to reconstruct regional history through Spanish eyes. Cushing also hired
two physical anthropologists, H. F. C. Ten Kate and Jacob Wortman, to take
61
measurements of neighboring tribes (Maricopa, Yuma, Pima) and to study

the skeletal remains from the excavations.
Mrs. Hemenway and Cushing envisioned a Pueblo museum in Salem,
Massachusetts, to serve as a permanent locus of study of the Southwest under
Cushing's direction. More important, though, the patron and the anthropologist shared a strong affinity for the poetic knowledge of the Zunis and other
Native Americans. During the summer of 1886 Mrs. Hemenway, a widowed
philanthropist who controlled an estimated $15 million, had listened attentively to Cushing's renditions of Zuni folk tales in her mansion at Manchesterby-the-Sea, Massachusetts. While she has remained an enigmatic figure, it is
apparent that Mary Hemenway endorsed Cushing's "insider's view" of Zuni
thought, possibly because she sensed, with him, piety and strength in deep
traditions that seemed to be lacking in the industrial civilization of America.
It was the search for the coherence of Indian life, vested in long, living
history, that was the spiritual center of the Hemenway Expedition under
Cushing.
By most measures the Expedition of 1886-88 was a failure: Cushing's
imagination wandered; he kept poor field notes; he fell miserably ill; he published very little. The sympathy and intuition that had served him so well as
a linguistic ethnographer at Zuni proved less helpful in archeology, and the
expedition structure, which required attention to mundane daily affairs of
finances and supplies, taxed his limited energies. Cushing found it particularly difficult to work in association with the advisory board in Boston, and
his expedition eventually dissolved in a flurry of accusation and recrimination. In early 1889, when he was desperately sick, Cushing even consulted a
seer whose analysis and prophecy of the expedition undoubtedly pleased hinr
Mr. Cushing will assert himself more than he has done before. In his anxiety \
to be perfectly just to each man, he has given up too much to them, individually, & allowed them to contend too much with him, thus wasting his force. . . .
There has been too much conceit and vanity, as to their own abilities. Too
many scientists so-called. He can furnish the scientific part. . . . When he
trusts to and uses his intuitional powers more, along with his practical opportunities for observation, he will attain greater results more quickly ...
(HCP: Julia H. Coffin, "Experiments in Psychometry,'' 4/9/89)
Coffin's prognostications proved to be grossly inaccurate. As Cushing's

health and his enterprise collapsed, Mrs. Hemenway's son, Augustus, turned
to a former Harvard classmate, Jesse Walter Fewkes, to head the Expedition.
Fewkes served until the Expedition closed when Mrs. Hemenway died in
1894, and brought a new style to southwestern fieldwork. The contrast with
Cushing could not have been sharper. Fewkes had been trained in natural
science at Harvard, specializing in marine biology, and in the mid-eighties
62
CURTIS HINSLEY
Jesse Fewkes at the beginning of his anthropological career, 1889. Courtesy Museum of Com
parative Zoology, Harvard University.
63
had served as an instructor and curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. By 1889, however, Alexander Agassiz, the Museum's director, had
become dissatisfied with Fewkes' work and denied him reappointment. The
Hemenway opportunity thus came to Fewkes at a critical juncture; despite
lack of experience in anthropology, he accepted readily.
Fewkes spent his first field season, 1890, at Zuni; the following year he
moved to Arizona for the first of many seasons at the Hopi mesas. Although
Fewkes did not leave first-hand accounts of his experiences, his assistant in
the field, John G. Owens, has provided a portrait of Fewkes in pueblo country. Fewkes arrived at Zuni in June, 1890, with no knowledge of the language
and, it is apparent, a strong sense of insecurity as the successor to the famous
Cushing. The Cushing model was ever-present; on the railroad trip westward, following Fewkes' advice, Owens was hurriedly reading Cushing's Century accounts of life at Zuni. Recently widowed, Fewkes approached the
Southwest stolidly and humorlessly, determined to survive and produce. He
and Owens took up residence in a house built by Cushing with Hemenway
money; for food they avoided native fare, depending mainly on canned provisions purchased by Mrs. Hemenway from "the finest grocery in Boston."
Fewkes was not an adventurous field man; after being thrown from a pony
in his first month, he steadfastly refused to get on another animal, often
walking many dusty miles as a result. While he and Owens gained access to
rituals and recorded the sights and sounds of the Zuni Corn Dance and other
celebrations of the summer months, their obvious inability to communicate
and lack of familiarity created tangible distance. Like others of his generation
who came to anthropology from the natural sciences, which were still highly
taxonomic and descriptive, Fewkes was a good visual observer and sketch
artist. But visual observation alone can actually distance the investigator,
and mere description is not understanding. For all his effort Fewkes remained
an outsider. Where Cushing patiently wrote down and translated Zuni folktales, Fewkes pioneered with the gramophone~an advance in technology,
but possibly a retreat from understanding.
There were memorable moments: Owens records at one point that Fewkes
has eighteen squaws and little girls in his room, "smoking his pipe and entertaining them with his limited vocabulary." But Fewkes depended heavily on
others for entree and information. At Zuni this function was performed by
trader Graham; among the Hopis, where Fewkes spent much time in the
nineties, he relied on Alexander Stephen, Thomas Kearn, and Keam's "righthand Indian" (as Owens called him), Tom Pa-lae-a. Washington Matthews,
student of the Navahos and friend of Cushing, reported with disgust to Cushing that "Our Boston friend, while in Zuni never spoke a word of Zuni and
didn't know a word of Spanish . . . yet he learned all about them in two
months. What a pity it is we have not a few more such brilliant lights in
64
CURTIS HINSLEY
Ethnography!" (HCP: WM/FHC 117/91). Alexander Stephen, who sat with

Fewkes through days and nights of Hopi dancing, imparted his own knowledge, gained over a decade, with little recognition in print. While Fewkes
appropriated his insights, Stephen viewed Fewkes as his sole means of communicating his knowledge to the larger world. He appealed to Fewkes to
recognize his position: "My dear boy-pity the hermit. You never have led
the life-but your desert experiences tell you what it is. They tell you all the
external conditions-but there are vivid strokes of hell in it that can not be
observed-they must be felt" (Wade & McChesney 1980:8).
Cushing had not produced as expected because, it was generally thought,
he had become too enmeshed in the web of Indian life, had let his "personal
equation" run away with him, and had not kept good records (Hinsley
1981:201). Fewkes intended to display a new professionalism. He would produce regular, short, focussed studies, turning out three or four for each season's work. The resulting pressure became intense. Owens came to see Fewkes
as an impatient, ambitious, proprietary, and jealous man, willing to appropriate the ideas and observations of others. The full revelation, recorded by
Owens in the summer of 1891, is worth relating at length:
Last year when we went to Zuni I rather mderstood that Dr. F. was going to
write up everything and while I took all the notes I could get, I published very
little. Indeed it was only toward the end of our stay there that I got that paper
on Games. Among the people at Zuni he-the Dr.-made the reputation of
being very selfish. In that, I most decidedly agree with them. I submitted to a
good many things only because I had to. When we came out this year he
"rounded me up" very thoroughly on the [railroad) cars, chided me for not
getting more last year and hoped I might get "something good" this summer.
His manner of putting it made me quite angry, but I smothered it. However I
made up my mind that I would get something. Two investigators on kindred
subjects had better be as far apart as possible, so I wanted him to let me work
on some cliff ruins near Flagstaff. He said, yes, but when we got near Flagstaff,
he said, I guess you had better go up with me [to the Hopi mesas]. That settled
that. Before we got here, one day at Mr. Keam's, I asked him a simple question
& he replied: "We must each work it out independently." You count on it, I
made up my mind we would do it, and when we got here he took his subject,
"The Dances" & I mine, the "Agriculture & Foods of the Moquis." Of course
they overlap in a couple of places; they must under conditions such as we have
here. Whether it is luck or not, I have made several good discoveries since we
came. . . . Now the fact is he has gotten very jealous. I suppose that is rather
presumptuous for a subordinate to write about his superior, but I believe it is
true; for "actions speak louder than words" & they (words) spoke loud enough
today. We are nearing the solstice and today the priests made bahos to plant
tomorrow for rain. I thought it belonged to my subject & when I found them
at it this morning, I did not send for the Dr. It proved to be a very fine thing
65
and about 3 o'clock he came along & was white with rage. I think I did what
was perfectly honorable, but he says not and the fact is I came nearly having
to take my valise & go tonight. He got the last part of the thing, but I got it
all. I am convinced it is nothing but jealousy. That sounds like self-praise, but
this year has at least made me confident that if other people can get these
things out I can. At least I don't believe I am behind in this race .... Tonight
I wish the summer was over and everything all right. Money is the only thing
that holds me tonight. If I were only a little better off, I would certainly say:
"To Halifax with your Expedition," then pull up my stakes & move on to this
very mesa and we would see who would have the best paper at the end of the
summer. An ordinary fellow, such as I am, dont mind getting kicked around
one summer, but when it comes to the second, he rather tires of it.
(JGOP: JGO/D. Stratton 6/18/91)
Fewkes' new professionalism in ethnography involved turning out the very

sort of fragmentary, descriptive pieces that Cushing had refused to produce.
The picture of Indian life Fewkes drew was piecemeal, from the outside inward-not, as Cushing prescribed, from a central core of understanding outward. Each summer he and Owens arduously gathered their "points" of ethnography, then compiled enough of them to construct articles on ritual, songs,
games, etc., to be published in the Expedition's Journal of American Archaeology and Ethnology. Fewkes saw himself as a disciplined scholar in constant
communication with a scientific audience; in contrast to Cushing, he would
be a reliable producer. But his ambition had a nasty side, causing Owens to
have second thoughts about a career in anthropology:
During this last year I have come in contact with many of what we call "investigators." They are men of eminence, men we all respect, indeed the men who
give us the books we quote as "authority" on the different subjects. But, as I
get a glimpse into this class of original investigators, when they are not on dress
parade, I see stamped on the countenance of almost every one the rankest
jealousy. Almost every one seems to look upon the work of every other one as
so much "rot."
(JGOP: JGO/D. Stratton 4/24/91)
If Owens deplored the pettiness of competitive work in the Southwest,

Cushing berated Fewkes for his basic failure to grasp ethnographic method
and purpose. Cushing reached new degrees of abuse when writing of Fewkes,
revealing a wide chasm between their conceptions of their work:
To say nothing of the man's past relations to me, I think the proposal to submit
my manuscript to such an utterly incompetent judge of ethnological data, as
that stupidly indiscriminating and perspiringly painstaking recorder of meaningless, disjointed, random half-observations of mere tribal externalities, always misnamed (and yet, invariably set forth as accurate scientific material for
66
CURTIS HINSLEY
future use!)-is the most presumptuously insulting proposition on the part of

those who once so heartily endorsed my interpretive methods, that could be
offered.
(ESMP: FHC/ESM 3/6/93)
Through Cushing's splenetic phrases emerges the trauma of adjustment
between field experience and institutional developments, which was probably the central issue for his anthropological generation. A community of
scientific anthropology on the model of other sciences required a common
language of discourse, channels of regular communication, and at least minimal consensus on judging method. These goals all entailed imposing a degree of discipline on the imagination of the individual worker in the field.
Trained through the graduate level under Louis Agassiz at Harvard, Jesse
Fewkes was "disciplined," and he undoubtedly knew well the formalities of
professional discourse. Cushing was brilliant but undisciplined; he insisted
that institutions mold themselves to his method and fancy. This proved impossible. As Adolph Bandelier perceived in his important critique of anthropology in 1885: "Our age is above all a critical age. It does not merely examine. In the interest of truth it dissects and compares" (Bandelier 1885:6).
Cushing's "internal," poetic mode of understanding raised problems of verification and accountability that to a generation enamored of analytical reasoning seemed insurmountable.
Over the past century every generation of American anthropologists seems
to have discovered the Southwest, and especially the Zuni Indians, anew;
indeed, the list of visiting anthropologists at Zuni has become so long that
they have themselves become a controversial part of Zuni folk memory and
a subject of study (Pandey 1972). In various odd ways, moreover, the Zunis
and the students of Zuni culture have assumed a place in the more general
Anglo-American literary tradition. Edmund Wilson visited the reservation
in 1947 and popularized his impressions (including a section on the anthropologists) in his famous cross-cultural study, Red, Black, Blond and OUve (1956).
Wilson had been preceded in this century, of course, by Ruth Benedict's
Patterns of Culture (1934) and by the thorough, less popular studies of Ruth
Bunzel in the thirties. Most interestingly, though, in 1932 Aldous Huxley
produced his brilliant dystopian novel, Brave New World, in which he drew
sharp contrasts between a sterile, regimented, drugged civilization of the fu.
ture and the organic, free, sensual cultures of the aboriginal Southwest. Generally unnoticed has been the fact that Huxley's doomed protagonist, John
the Savage, the White Indian, was clearly inspired by the Cushing legend.
Indeed, two of the Zuni names which Huxley employs-Palowaihtiwa and
Waihusiwa-belonged to Cushing's close friends (Huxley 1932:136, 143).
67
There is a certain justice that Cushing should have lived on in literature

as well as in science, for he was a man of primarily metaphorical insights. It
should not be surprising, then, to learn that his final effort from the Hemenway Expedition was not an attempt at "working up" his fieldnotes, but a series
of reflections appended to The Song of the Ancient People, an epic poem of the
Southwest by Boston poetess Edna Dean Proctor. Cushing called his contribution "Commentary of a Zuni Familiar" (Proctor 1893:27-49). Dictating it
while he was feverishly ill in 1892, he considered it his finest product of the
Hemenway years, and in its title he came closest to describing his own anthropological role as intimate translator and mediator between cultures.
In April 1900, Cushing choked on a fishbone at dinner in his Washington
home and died. He was forty-two years old. Fewkes enjoyed a much longer
career, joining the Bureau of American Ethnology in the mid-nineties and
eventually, in the 1920s, taking charge of the institution founded by Powell.
He remained there until his death in 1930. In their disparate fates, as in their
distinct field practices in the Southwest, lay revealing indications of the alternatives and tensions within the American anthropological tradition.
Whether one looks at purpose, method, or institutional structure-all of
which are closely related-Cushing and Fewkes operated at polar points. In
the best tradition of the holistic, empathic humanities, Cushing sought to
convey the complex historical richness of one culture to another (and vice
versa), looking first to the deepest internal mental and social configurations.
He saw little sense in anything less. This purpose prescribed for him a method
of observation and intuitive connections that in tum required the faith of a
patron rather than the routine of a bureaucracy. Cushing was extremely fortunate, in fact, in having enjoyed the support of a series of individualsPowell, Hemenway, Phoebe Hearst-who attached few strings to their faith
and funds. On an institutional continuum, then, Cushing occupied a position of extreme individualism.
Although he was repeatedly accused of violating the canons of scholarship, Jesse Fewkes belonged by training and temperament entirely to the
established institutional world of American natural science. A forerunner of
the trait list school, Fewkes believed that persistent observation would eventually yield sufficient data to assemble a coherent picture of the external
forms of other cultures. That he believed in the possibility of any deeper
understanding is, I think, doubtful. But for his purposes Fewkes required the
steady, long-term support, the regularity and the focus best represented by
government bureaucratic structure.
The point at issue here is not the gains and losses in the institutionalization or professionalization of American anthropology so much as the varieties
of institutional forms and their intimate relationships to the investigator's
purpose and method. Cushing and Fewkes embodied the struggle, as their
68
CURTIS HINSLEY
generation experienced it, between intuitive understanding and disciplined

knowledge, and the contest continued within Boasian anthropology. Franz
Boas knew both the humanist tradition of Cushing and the natural science
of Fewkes; because he embraced both, Boasian anthropology as it developed
in the first decades of the twentieth century contained the tensions and ambiguities-and possibilities-of an intermediary, embracive position between
individualism and bureaucracy, holistic and elemental knowledge, imagination and discipline (cf. Stocking 1974). Boas sowed the seeds of the trait list,
emphasizing the importance of gathering mater~als for systematic comparison; but he also from the very beginning recognized the critical value of
recording texts as windows into internal mental life (Stocking 1977). Similarly, as an institutional form, the university department of anthropology,
according to Boas' vision, was intended to retain the virtues of both patron
and bureaucracy, permitting the imaginative genius to flower in a disciplined
environment of reliable financial and moral support.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Lea S. McChesney, of the Kearn-Hemenway Project at Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, for valuable assistance in locating materials, and for good discussions.
REFERENCES CITED
Bandelier, A. F. 1885. The romantic school in American archaeology. New York.
Brandes, R. S. 1965. Frank Hamilton Cushing: Pioneer Americanist. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona.
Cooper, J. F. 1826. The last of the Mahicans. Boston (1896).
Cushing, F. H. 1897. The need of studying the Indian in order to teach him. Albion,
N.Y.
ESMP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Fewkes, J. W., ed. 1891-1908.]. Am. Arch. & Ethn. 1-5.
FHCP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Green, J., ed. 1979. Zuni: Selected writings of Frank Hamilton Cushing. Lincoln, Neb.
HCP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Hinsley, C. M. 1981. Savages and scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the development of American anthropology, 1846-1910. Washington.
Huxley, A. 1932. Brave new world. New York (1946).
JGOP. See under Manuscript Sources.
69
Mark, J. 1976. Frank Hamilton Cushing and an American science of anthropology.

Persp. Am. Hist. 10:449-86.
MCSP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Pandey, T. N. 1972. Anthropologists at Zuni. Procs. Am. Phil. Soc. 116:321-37.
Proctor, E. D. 1893. The song of the ancient people. Boston.
Schoolcraft, H. R. 1846. An address, delivered before the Was-Ah-Ho-De-No-Son-Ne,
or new confederacy of the Iroquois, at its third annual council, August 14, 1846. Rochester, N.Y.
Stocking, G. W. 1974. The basic assumptions of Boasian anthropology. In his The
shaping of American anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas reader, 1-20. New York.
- - - . 1977. The aims of Boasian ethnography: Creating the materials for traditional humanistic scholarship. Hist. Anth. Newsl. 4(2):4-5.
Ten Kate, H. F. C. 1885. Reizen en onderzoekingen en Noord-Amerika. Leiden.
Wade, E. L., & L. S. McChesney. 1980. America's great lost expedition: The Thomas
Kearn collection of Hopi pottery from the second Hemenway Expedition, 1890-1894.
Phoenix.
Wilson, E. 1956. Red, black, blond and olive: Studies in four civilizations: Zuni, Haiti,
Soviet Russia, Israel. New York.
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
In writing this paper I have drawn on research materials collected from the following
manuscript sources, cited as abbreviated:
ESMP
FHCP
E. S. Morse Papers, Phillips Library, Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass.
Frank Hamilton Cushing Papers, National Anthropological Archives,

Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
HCP
F. W. Hodge/F. H. Cushing Papers, Southwest Museum, Los Angeles.
JGOP John G. Owens Papers, Peabody Museum Archives, Harvard University,
Cambridge, Mass.
MCSP Matilda C. Stevenson Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
I would like to thank all the repositories and archivists for their helpful assistance.
THE ETHNOGRAPHER'S
MAGIC
Fieldwork in British Anthropology
from Tylor to Malinowski
GEORGE W. STOCKING, JR.
In the informal give-and-take of everyday disciplinary life, anthropologists
occasionally speak of themselves in terms traditionally applied to tribal groups
or folk societies. Since the latter are entities a more rigorously professional
discourse has come to regard as problematic, one hesitates to suggest that an
investigative community has taken on some of the characteristics of its subject matter. But there are similarities nonetheless, especially in relation to
what has come to be regarded as the constitutive experience of social/cultural
anthropology-and this in a multiple sense, since it at once distinguishes the
discipline, qualifies its investigators, and creates the primary body of its empirical data. Even in an age when it is becoming increasingly difficult to carry
on in traditional terms, fieldwork by participant-observation, preferably in a
face-to-face social group quite different from that of the investigator, is the
hallmark of social/cultural anthropology (Epstein 1967; Jarvie 1966; GS 1982).
As the central ritual of the tribe, fieldwork is the subject of a considerable
mythic elaboration. Although there are variant versions of the charter myth
in different national anthropological traditions (Urry n. d.), there is one so
widely known as to require no recounting, even among non-anthropologists.
Its hero is of course the Polish-born scientist Bronislaw Malinowski, who,
George W. Stocking, Jr., is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Morris

Fishbein Center for the Study of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Chicago. Author and editor of numerous books and articles on the history of
anthropology, he has for some time been engaged in research on various aspects of
the history of anthropology in Britain.
70
FIELDWORK IN BRITISH ANTHROPOLOGY
71
while interned as an enemy alien in Australia during World War I, spent two
years living in a tent among the Trobriand Islanders, and brought back to
Britain the secret of successful social anthropological research (Kabery 1957;
Leach 1965; Powdermaker 1970). Although Malinowski had by the 1960s
lost his status as shaper of anthropological theory (Firth ed. 1957; Firth 1981;
Gluckman 1963), his place as mythic culture hero of anthropological method
was at once confirmed and irrevocably compromised by the publication of
his field diaries (BM 1967), which revealed to a far-flung progeny of horrified
Marlows that their Mistah Kurtz had secretly harbored passionately aggressive
feelings towards the "niggers" among whom he lived and labored-when he
was not withdrawing from the heart of darkness to share the white-skinned
civilized brotherhood of local pearlfishers and traders (e.g., Geertz 196 7; cf.
Conrad 1902).
Disillusion has elicited a small body of literature either further scrabbling
at the hero's feet of clay (Hsu 1979) or attempting to refurbish his image
(including some strained attempts to suggest he may never have actually said
the damning word [Leach 1980)). But it has so far led no one to probe historically the mythic origins of the Malinowskian fieldwork tradition. Seeking
neither to debunk nor to defend, the present essay (cf. GS 1968a, 1980a)
attempts to place Malinowski's Trobriand adventure in the context of earlier
British fieldwork, and to show how his achievement-and its self-mythicization-helped to establish the special cognitive authority claimed by the
modem ethnographic tradition (cf. Clifford 1983).
FROM THE ARMCHAIR TO THE FIELD

IN THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION
Let us begin with the state of anthropological method before the culture hero
came upon the scene-for this, too, is part of the myth we seek to historicize.
A good place to start is the year before Malinowski's birth, a moment which
in mythic time is still part of the pre-promethian period when evolutionary
titans, seated in their armchairs, culled ethnographic data from travel accounts to document their vision of the stages of creation of human cultural
forms. While the major early statements of evolutionary anthropology (e.g.,
McLennan 1865; Tylor 1871) were based on essentially this sort of information, it is also the case that the evolutionary anthropologists were very seriously concerned with improving the quantity and quality of their empirical
data. Their initial approach to the problem in the early 1870s had been
through the preparation of Notes and Queries "to promote accurate anthro-
72
GEORGE
W.
STOCKING,
Ja.
pological observation on the part of travellers, and to enable those who are
not anthropologists themselves to supply the information which is wanted
for the scientific study of anthropology at home" (BAAS 1874:iv). In assuming that empirical data collected by gentleman amateurs abroad could provide the basis for the more systematic inquiries of metropolitan scholarscientists, anthropologists were in fact following in the footsteps of other
mid-Victorian scientists (cf. Urry 1972). But by 1883, events were already
in process that were to draw more closely together the empirical and the
theoretical components of anthropological inquiry.
By this time, E. B. Tylor, who had just come to Oxford as Keeper of the
University Museum and Reader in Anthropology, was in regular correspondence with people overseas who were in a position to collect first-hand ethnographic data-notably the missionary ethnographer Lorimer Fison (EBTP:
LF/EBT 1879-96). And while Tylor's position did not involve regular graduate training of students as fieldworkers in anthropology, his lectures were
attended by several whose careers in the colonies were to provide significant
ethnographic data, including the Melanesian missionary Robert Henry Codrington and the explorer of Guiana (and later colonial official) Everard Im
Thurn (EBTP: lecture registers; Codrington 1891; Im Thurn 1883). Furthermore, when anthropology achieved full section status in the British Association in 1884, Tylor was instrumental in establishing a Committee "for the
purpose of investigating and publishing reports on the physical characters,
languages, and industrial and social condition of the North-western Tribes of
the Dominion of Canada" (BAAS 1884:lxxii; cf. Tylor 1884). Founded with
an eye towards the United States Bureau of Ethnology, which was already
"sending out qualified agents to reside among the western tribes for purposes
of philological and anthropological study," the Committee began by preparing a "Circular of Inquiry" for the use of government officers, missionaries,
travellers, and others "likely to possess or obtain trustworthy information."
The data thus obtained were to be edited and synthesized by Horatio Hale,
whose "experience and skill in such research" were attested by his role in the
U.S. Exploring Expedition some fifty years before (BAAS 1887: 173-74).
Occasioned by the earlier British Association questionnaire having gone
out of print, the Committee's new Circular was largely stripped of theoretical
orienting remarks-with which Tylor, especially, had embellished his sections of Notes and Queries (BAAS 1874:50, 64, 66). Although Tylor (apparently the principal author) still directed the inquirer toward many of its presumed empirical manifestations, the Circular contains no explicit mention
of "animism." More strikingly, in trying to reach "the theological stratum in
the savage mind" inquirers were cautioned against asking "un-called for questions," but urged rather to watch "religious rites actually performed, and then
73
to ascertain what they mean." Similarly, the collection of myth-texts "written

down in the native languages," "translated by a skilled interpreter," and explicated along the way was "the most natural way" to get at "ideas and beliefs
which no inquisitorial cross-questioning" would induce the Indian story-teller
to disclose (BAAS 1887: 181-82). Tylor was throughout his career concerned
with issues of method, and one assumes that a decade of further reflection in
the context of his correspondence with such observers-on-the-spot as Lorimer Fison had contributed to a heightened ethnographic sophistication. By
this time, he was no longer willing to rest satisfied with research by questionnaire. From the beginning of the Northwest Coast project, it was assumed
that, based on the results of such inquiry, some of the "more promising dis
tricts" would be the subjects of"personal survey" by Hale, or (when it became
evident that his age would make this impossible) by an agent who "would act
under his directions" (BAAS 1887:174; cf. Gruber 1967).
FROM MISSIONARIES TO ACADEMIC

NATURAL SCIENTISTS
The Committee on the North-western Tribes of Canada was only one of a
number established by the British Association in the 1880s and 1890s for
empirical anthropological research both in the colonial empire and within
the United Kingdom. 1 In the present context, however, it is particularly
noteworthy for the personnel who were to serve as Hale's agents in the field.
The first man chosen was a missionary who had worked for nineteen years
among the Ojibwa and who travelled summers farther west to recruit Indian
children for his mission school (Wilson 1887:183-84). Reverend E. F. Wilson, however, was soon to be replaced by a young man better known in the
history of ethnographic methodology: the German-born physicist-turnedethnologist Franz Boas, whose work on Vancouver Island in the fall of 1886
brought him to the attention of Hale and the Committee. Although the
1. Aside from several committees specifically concerned with physical anthropological or
archeological data, BAAS committees with ethnographic concern included: one on "the tribes
of Asia Minor" (BAAS 1888:1xxxiii); one on "the natives of India" (BAAS 1889:1xxxi); one on
"the transformation of native tribes in Mashonaland" (BAAS 189l:lxxx); one for an "ethnographical survey of the United Kingdom" (BAAS 189Z:lxxxix); one for an "ethnological survey
of Canada" (BAAS 1896:xciii). There were also several committees appointed to support or
supervise expeditions initiated outside the Association: one for Haddon's Torres Straits Expedition (BAAS 1897:xcix); one for W. W. Skeat's Cambridge Expedition to Malaya (BAAS
1898:xcix); one for W. H. R. Rivers' work among the Todas (BAAS 190Z:xcii).
74
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, jR.
details of Boas' decade-long relationship with the British Association Committee are for the most part beyond the scope of the present inquiry (Rohner
1969; GS 1974:83-107), it is worth noting that his employment marks the
beginning of an important phase in the development of British ethnographic
method: the collection of data by academically trained natural scientists defining themselves as anthropologists, and involved also in the formulation
and evaluation of anthropological theory.
The shift from Wilson to Boas symbolizes also a more deeply rooted, longerrun and somewhat complex shift in the anthropological attitude toward missionary ethnographers. In the pre-evolutionary era, James Cowles Prichardanother armchair speculator who, from a somewhat different theoretical
viewpoint, was also concerned with the quality of his data-had preferred
information collected by missionaries to that of "naturalists" because the latter made only brief visits and never learned the native language (1847:283;
cf. GS 1973). The centrality of religious belief in the evolutionary paradigm
tended, however, to compromise data collected by those whose primary commitment was to the extirpation of"heathen supersition," and Tylor's orienting
commentary in Notes and Queries had clearly been intended to facilitate the
careful observation of savage religion by people whose prejudices might predispose them to distort it (BAAS 1874:50). It was not until two anthropological generations later, when a corps of researchers actually trained academically in anthropology had entered the ethnographic arena, that the modem
opposition between missionary and ethnographer was established in the ateliers of Boas and of Malinowski (Stipe 1980)-although the latter did in
fact get on well with missionary leaders active in the International African
Institute (GS 1979b). Most of the earlier British natural scientists-cumanthropologists still maintained a working ethnographic relationship with
missionaries. Nevertheless, this intermediate generation contributed significantly to the emergence of an ethnographic method that (whatever its underlying analogies to the missionary experience) was perceived by its practitioners as characteristically "anthropological."
Although the key figure in the early phase of this process was Alfred Cort
Haddon, his career line was followed, up to a point, by another naturalist/
ethnographer: Walter Baldwin Spencer. Both were part of that post-Darwinian
generation for whom it first became a marginally realistic option as an undergraduate to decide "I want to become a scientist" (cf. Mendelsohn 1963).
Spencer was a protege of the zoologist Henry Moseley at Oxford (Marett &
Penniman eds. 1931:10-46); Haddon, of the physiologist Michael Foster at
Cambridge (Quiggin 1942; Geison 1978). Both began their careers as zoologists in universities at the imperial periphery-although it was a good deal
easier for Haddon to return to the academic center from Dublin than it was
for Spencer off in Melbourne. Both became interested in ethnographic data
75
while carrying on zoological fieldwork; capitalizing permanently on their newfound interest, both ended their careers as anthropologists.
HADDON IN THE TORRES STRAITS: 1888-1899

Haddon first went out to the Torres Straits in 1888 in the hope that an
important scientific expedition might help him escape what seemed after
seven years the dead end of a provincial professorship. His scientific goals
were archetypically Darwinian: to study the fauna, the structure, and the
mode of formation of coral reefs. Having been told "that a good deal was
already known" about the natives of the area, he "had previously determined
not to study them" (1901:vii)-although he did take along the Questions on
the Customs, Beliefs and Languages of Savages James Frazer had privately printed
in 1887 to facilitate research on The Golden Bough. Haddon had barely arrived, however, before he began collecting "curios" he apparently hoped to
sell to museums to recoup some of the expenses of the trip. On the island of
Mabuaig, where he settled for a longer stay, he would join the already m\ssionized natives round their campfire for evening prayers, and as they talke'N.
on into the night in pidgin, he asked them what life had been like before the
white men came. As the older men "yarned," Haddon became convinced
that if he neglected this ethnographic opportunity, it was likely to be lost
forever (Quiggin 1942:81-86). Although he continued his zoological research, he filled every spare moment with ethnography, and before his departure his primary interest had clearly shifted to anthropology. As a biologist
concerned with the geographical distribution of forms over a continuous area
(in the manner of Darwin in the Galapagos) his most systematic ethnological
concern was with material culture-the provenience and distribution of those
"curios" he had been collecting. But he also recorded a considerable amount
of general ethnographic data, which upon his return was published in the
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, organized in terms of the categories of
"that invaluable little book," Notes and Queries on Anthropology (1890:297-300).
In the context of the ethnographic reorientation already evidenced in the
British Association, it is not surprising that Haddon's data were of interest to
leading anthropologists (Quiggin 1942:90-95). As an academic man with
field experience in ethnography, he was a rarity in British anthropology, and
soon made his way to its front ranks by the same process through which he
trained himself in the research orientations then dominating it: physical anthropology and folklore. Taking over as the principal investigator in Ireland
for the British Association's Ethnographic Survey of the British Isles, which
76
GEORGE
STOCKING,
Ja.
the anthropologists and folklorists co-sponsored in the 1890s (ACH 1895b),

he soon won an appointment as lecturer in physical anthropology at Cambridge, a position which for some years he held jointly with his Dublin chair.
Although he drew on his Torres Straits material for a volume on Evolution in
Art (1895a), however, he felt that his data were inadequate for an ethnographic monograph he had outlined in the early 1890s (ACHP (1894)). To
complete them, and to expand his Cambridge foothold into a "School of
Anthropology,'' he began to plan for a second and strictly anthropological
expedition (ACHP: ACH/P. Geddes 114/97).
For Haddon, "anthropology" still had the embracive meaning it had gained
in the nineteenth-century Anglo-American evolutionary tradition, and which
it might also be expected to have for a field naturalist, to whom the behavior,
cries, and physical characteristics of animals were all part of a single observational syndrome. Aware, however, that some areas of anthropological inquiry had developed a technical elaboration beyond the limitations of his
own competence, and anxious to introduce the methods of experimental
psychology to accurately "gauge the mental and sensory capacities of primitive peoples," Haddon took as his model the great nineteenth-century multidisciplinary maritime exploring expeditions-on the basis of one of which
Moseley had made his reputation and won his position at Oxford (Moseley
1879). He therefore sought "the co-operation of a staff of colleagues, each of
whom had some special qualification," so that they could divide the labor of
anthropological inquiry, one doing physical measurement, another psychological testing, another linguistic analysis, another sociology, and so forth
(190l:viii).
As it happened, Haddon ended up with three experimental psychologists.
His first choice had been his Cambridge colleague W H. R. Rivers, who
after early training in medicine had come under the influence of the neurologist Hughlings Jackson and gone on to study experimental psychology in
Germany. Upon his return, Rivers was asked by Foster to lecture on the
physiology of the sense organs at Cambridge, and there introduced the first
course of instruction in experimental psychology in Britain (Langham 1981;
Slobodin 1978). Unwilling at first to leave England, Rivers proposed his
student Charles Myers to take his place; another student, William McDougall, volunteered himself before Rivers decided after all to come along
(ACHP: WHR/ACH 11125/97; WM/ACH 5/26/97). At Codrington's suggestion, Haddon had been working since 1890 on his linguistic data with
Sydney Ray, a specialist in Melanesian languages who made his living as a
London schoolteacher, but who managed now to get an unpaid leave (RHC/
ACH 4/9/90; SR/ACH 6/6/97). Haddon's own student Anthony Wilkinstill an undergraduate-was recruited to handle the photography and assist
with physical anthropology (AW/ACH 1127/98). Charles Seligman, a doctor
77
friend of Myers and McDougall who also volunteered his services, rounded
out the group as specialist in native medicine (CGS/ACH 10/28/97).
Supported by money from the University, various scientific societies, and
the British and Queensland governments, the members of the expedition
nrrived by commercial steamer in the Torres Straits late in April, 1898. They
nil began work on Murray (Mer) Island in the eastern straits, where the three
psychologists continued testing the natives until late August, when Myers
nnd McDougall went off as advance guard for research in Sarawak, to which
the expedition had been invited by Rajah Brooke (at the instigation of dis
trict officer Charles Hose). Within three weeks of their arrival on Mer, however, Haddon, Ray, Wilkin, and Seligman were off for a two-month trip to
Port Moresby and several nearby districts on the Papuan coast. Leaving Selig
man to work northwest along the mainland, the other three rejoined Rivers
on Mer late in July. Early in September all four sailed from Mer to meet
Seligman in the Kiwai district, where they left Ray to work on linguistics,
while the others went southwest for a month's work on Mabuaig. Late in
October, Rivers and Wilkin left for England, while Haddon, Ray, and Seligman took a three-week jaunt to Saibai and several smaller islands, and then
hack to the Cape York Peninsula, whence they departed in late November
for four months' work in Sarawak and Borneo (ACH 190l:xiii-xiv).
Detailing the itinerary is to the point, since it was on the basis of this
rather hurried research, carried on entirely in pidgin Eqglish, that there were
to be produced eventually six large volumes of ethnographic data-not to
mention Haddon's popular narrative account (1901), materials incorporated
into later books by Seligman on The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910)
and by Hose and McDougall on The Pagan Tribes of Borneo (1912), and numerous journal articles. Of course, Haddon drew also on materials he had
collected in 1888, but much of his ethnography was frankly carried on at
second hand: he culled extensively from missionary and travel accounts, and
relied heavily on material provided by traders, missionaries, and government
employees, either on the spot, or in his extensive subsequent ethnographyby-mail (ACHP:passim). His most important ethnographic intermediary, a
government schoolmaster named John Bruce who had lived for a decade on
Mer, was the acknowledged source of perhaps half of the information recorded in the volume on Mer sociology and religion (ACH ed. 1908:xx).
This is not to minimize the labors of Haddon and his colleagues, who surely
produced a large amount of data in relatively short ethnographic episodes
(including, one may note, some of the very earliest ethnographic cinematography [Brigard 1975)), and who at many points evidenced a considerable
thoughtfulness and sensitivity about problems of ethnographic method. It is
simply to emphasize that there was still some distance from Torres Straits to
fieldwork in the classic anthropological mode.
78
GEORGE
w STOCKING, JR.
OBSERVING THE STONE AGE AT FIRST HAND

IN AUSTRALIA
Spencer's ethnography is much closer in style to that of later social anthropology. Like Haddon's, however, it developed as a deviation from zoological
research. While still at Oxford, Spencer had attended Tylor's lectures, watched
him demonstrate the making of stone tools, and helped Moseley and Tylor
begin the installation of the Pitt Rivers collection of material culture in a
new annex to the University Museum (WBSP: WBS/H. Govitz 2/18/84; 6/
21/85). During his early years at Melbourne, Spencer was too preoccupied
with teaching biology for research of any sort, and when he joined the Hom
Expedition to the Central Australian desert in 1894, it was as zoologist-the
anthropological work being delegated to E. C. Stirling, a lecturer in physiology at Adelaide. Stirling, however, was more interested in physical anthropology and material culture than in Australian marriage classes, and he seems
not to have risen to the opportunity when at Alice Springs the expedition
came upon the local equivalent of Haddon's Murray schoolmaster (Stirling
1896). Frank Gillen was an outgoing Irish republican who for twenty years
had served as station master of the transcontinental telegraph and "subprotector" of the local aborigines. Although he habitually referred to them
as "niggers," and to fieldwork as "niggering," Gillen got on very well with the
Arunta, and had already been collecting information on their customs, a
portion of which was published in the report of the expedition (Gillen 1896).
He did not get along so well with Stirling, but Gillen took to Spencer, and
the two became fast friends--despite Gillen's occasional irritation when Spencer
reproved his racial epithets (Gillen once berated Spencer for his own "arrogant assumption of superiority so characteristic of your Nigger-assimilating
race" [WBSP: FG/WBS 1/31/96)).
On returning from central Australia, Spencer put Gillen in touch with
Fison, the leading authority on Australian marriage classes, who by this time
had retired to Melbourne (WBSP: FG/WBS 8/30/95). Soon, Spencer and
Gillen had joined forces for further research-Spencer writing from Melbourne to pose evolutionary questions about marriage classes; Gillen writing
back with the ethnographic data he obtained. Gillen, however, soon became
dissatisfied with what he felt was "only a splendid verification" of work previously done by Fison and Howitt (1880). Complaining that "getting at the
'why' of things is utterly hopeless" because "when driven into a comer they
always take refuge in the alcheringa," Gillen reported to Spencer that he was
"on the track of a big ceremony called Engwura" (7/14/96). By offering the
rations necessary to support a gathering of far-flung clansmen, he was able,
"after much palaver," to convince the Arunta elders to hold the great periodic
initiation ceremony one more time (8/n.d./96).
79
When Spencer arrived in November 1896, Gillen introduced him as his

younger classificatory brother, thereby entitling him to membership in the
same Witchity Grub totem to which Gillen himself belonged. Fison and
Howitt, as great Oknirabata (men of influence) in southeastern Australian
tribes, and ultimate recipients and judges of the information to be collected,
were assigned to the lizard and wildcat totems, on the basis of sketch portraits
drawn by the two ethnographers (WBSP: FG/WBS 2/23/97). Although Gillen had expected the ceremonies to last only a week, they went on for three
months, during which he and Spencer lived at or near the Arunta camp,
observing the ceremonies, discussing with the natives (in pidgin and Gillen's
somewhat limited Arunta) the associated myths and religious beliefs (Spencer & Gillen 1899). Their racial attitudes and evolutionary theoretical assumptions seem not to have inhibited a considerable degree of empathetic
identification: finally discovering the profound religious significance of the
churingas, and assimilating aboriginal belief to his own lost Roman Catholicism, Gillen expressed bitter regret for his previous casual treatment of these
sacred objects (7/30/97).
When the ceremonies ended, Spencer and Gillen had a wealth of ethnographic detail about native ritual life of a sort that armchair anthropologists
had never previously experienced. Frazer, who ~ became Spencer's own
mentor-by-correspondence, had never felt himself so close to the Stone Age
(1931:3; Marett & Penniman eds. 1932). But despite the evolutionary
framework in which it had been conceived and into which it was received,
the monograph that appeared in 1899 was recognizably "modem" in its ethnographic style. Rather than running through the categories of Notes and
Queries or some other armchair questionnaire, The Native Tribes of Central
Australia was given focus by a totalizing cultural performance. Coming at a
point when evolutionary theory was already somewhat in disarray, and offering data on totemism that conflicted with received assumption, it had tremendous impact. Malinowski suggested in 1913 that half of the anthropological theory written since had been based upon it, and all but a tenth heavily
influenced by it (1913c}.
Malinowski no doubt also recognized an ethnographic style that was closer
to his own than Haddon's-whose expedition had not yet returned from the
Torres Straits when Native Tribes was published. Its status as an ethnographic
innovation (and perhaps an alternative model: the ethnographic "team") was
compromised, however, by Spencer's failure to leave significant academic
progeny. Rather than creating an anthropological school, he was incorporated into an already established line of Australian ethnologists (Mulvaney
1958, 1967). As Fison had been to Tylor, so he became one of Frazer's "menon-the-spot." Although Frazer never left the armchair, he was a great encourager of anthropological fieldwork. For several decades he worked hard to
80
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
sustain the researches of John Roscoe, a missionary among the Baganda who
had responded to his questionnaire. In 1913 he even tried to get the Colonial
Office to appoint Roscoe Government Anthropologist in East Africa (JGFP:
JGF/JR 11127/13; cf. Thornton n.d. ). Frazer often said that the efforts of
fieldworkers would long outlast his own theoretical musings. But his insistence on a sharp separation of ethnography and theory (which should "regularly and rightly be left to the comparative ethnologist" [1931:9)) ran counter
to the emerging tradition of fieldworker academics, and his hermetic style
prevented him from leaving academic anthropological offspring. Accepting
a role as Frazer's ethnographic agent in Australia, Spencer also died heirless.
Left hanging on a collateral branch off in the colonies, he was effectively
removed from the myth-making process in British anthropology, where lineage relations have played a much more powerful role than in the pluralistic
American academic institutional structure (Kuper 1973).
THE "INTENSIVE STUDY OF LIMITED AREAS"

BEFORE THE GREAT WAR
In the meantime, Haddon and his colleagues were becoming recognized as
"the Cambridge School" (Quiggin 1942:110-30). Although the early Torres
Straits volumes contained data on physiological psychology, social organization, and totemism that were significant for contemporary theoretical discussions, it was less the empirical data it collected than the expedition itsel~as
a symbol of ethnographic enterprise that established the group's reputation.
And it took several years to achieve a solid institutional base in the University. Frazer's effort, shortly after the expedition's return, to memorialize the
Board of General Studies for the establishment of regular instruction in ethnology produced for Haddon only a poorly paid lectureship to replace the
one in physical anthropology to which W. L. Duckworth had been appointed
in his absence (ACHP: JGF/ACH 10/17, 10/28/99). It was not until 1904
that a Board of Anthropological Studies was set up, and not until five years
later that a Diploma course was established and Haddon given a Readership
(Fortes 1953).
From the time of his return, however, Haddon busily propagandized for
more anthropological "field-work" (a term, apparently derived from the discourse of field naturalists, which Haddon seems to have introduced into that
of British anthropology). In his presidential addresses to the Anthropological
Institute and in popular articles, he spoke of the pressing need of "our Cinderella Science" for "fresh investigations in the field" carried on by men trained
as "field-anthropologists" (1903b:22). Warning against the "rapid collector,"
81
he emphasized the urgent necessity not simply to gather "specimens" but to

tnke the time to "coax out of the native by patient sympathy" the deeper
meaning of the material collected. Always inclined to view scientific work
In the same spirit of rationalized cooperative endeavor that characterized his
mildly socialist politics, Haddon suggested that "two or three good men should
he always in the field" supported by an international council that would set
research priorities (1903a:228-29). His own conception of these priorities
was captured in the slogan "the intensive study of limited areas."
It is not clear, however, that Haddon meant by this the sort of intensive
study that was shortly to emerge. Coming from zoology, he was oriented
toward the study of "biological provinces." His proposal for a steamer expe
dition to Melanesia that would drop off investigators on different islands,
returning to pick them up several months later, was intended to clarify the
distribution and variation of forms in a region, with emphasis particularly on
transitional forms and areas. His ultimate ethnological goal was still the elucidation of the "nature, origin and distribution of the races and peoples" of a
particular region, and the clarification of their position in evolutionary development (1906:87). Even so, the movement was clearly toward a more
focussed, extended, and intensive ethnography-and towards a distinction
hetween "survey" and "intensive" work.
Haddon was not the only Torres Straits alumnus to contribute to the reputation of the "Cambridge School." For a number of them the expedition was
either the beginning or a significant turning point in a quite distinguished
career. Ray's reputation as a brilliant Melanesian linguistic scholar never
managed to provide a paying alternative to his London schoolteacher's job
(ACH 1939), and within two years of his return Wilkin died of dysentery
contracted while doing archeological research in Egypt. McDougall and Myers,
however, went on to become leaders in psychology-authoring, respectively,
influential early textbook introductions to social and experimental psychology (Drever 1968; Bartlett 1959). Before leaving anthropology, Myers did
further fieldwork in Egypt, and Seligman and Rivers were of course the leading field anthropologists of their generation in Britain. After Torres Straits,
Seligman (teaming later with his wife Brenda) worked successively in New
Guinea and Ceylon (1910, 1911; Firth 1975) before beginning a long series
of investigations in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1910 (1932; Fortes 1941).
Rivers went on to do research in Egypt, then among the Todas in India, and
came back twice for further work in Melanesia before returning to psychology
during World War I (Slobodin 1978). Though much of their own work was
of what came to be called the "survey" variety, both men played a role in
training a rising generation of field researchers whose work was in an increasingly more "intensive" mode-Rivers at Cambridge in cooperation with
Haddon; Seligman at the London School of Economics, where he joined the
82
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
Seligman at work, Hula. "The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position ...
on the verandah ... where ... he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants
... [and] ... go out into the villages" (Malinowski !926a:l47). Courtesy University Museum
of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, England.
Anglo-Finnish sociologist Edward Westermarck, who himself did extensive

fieldwork in Morocco (1927:158-96). At Oxford, all three Torres Straits
alumni served occasionally as informal extramural ethnographic mentors to
the several fieldworkers recruited into anthropology by Marett and his colleagues in the Committee on Anthropology established in 1905 (Marett 1941).
Bronislaw Malinowski was a member of this pre-World War I group, and
in fact the last of them actually to get into the field. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
83
(not yet, however, hyphenated) was the first; in his case the Torres Straits
model was still in evidence, with all the functions of its divided scientific
labor to be carried on by one lone investigator. Brown was actually in the
field only for a portion of the two years normally listed for his Andaman
l'Xpedition (1906-1908), and much of his research was apparently carried on
among the "hangers-on" around the prison camp at Fort Blair. His attempt
to study unacculturated Little Andamanese was frustrated by his difficulties
with their language ("I ask for the word 'arm' and I get the Onge for 'you are
pinching me'" [ACHP: ARB/ACH n.d.; 8/10/06)). But if his Andaman work
is less notable ethnographically than for its later recasting in the mold of
I )urkheimian theory, it was nonetheless clearly a further step toward a more
intensive fieldwork style (Radcliffe-Brown 1922; GS 1971).
The year of Brown's return saw two other young academic ethnographers
11ff to the southwestern Pacific with Rivers on the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition. While Rivers' own work seems mostly to have been done on board
the mission ship Southern Cross as it sailed from island to island, Gerald C.
Wheeler (from the London School of Economics) and A. M. Hocart (from
Oxford) undertook much more intensive study. Wheeler spent ten month\
among the Mono-Alu in the Western Solomons (1926:vii); Hocart, after
working for ten weeks with Wheeler and Rivers on Eddystone Island (1922),
settled in Fiji for four years, where as schoolmaster he collected a very rich
body of ethnographic data (WHRP: AMH/WHR 4/16/09; cf. AMHP) . . .
In the remaining years before the war, more than half a dozen young anthropologists left English universities for the field. Brown was back in 1910
fi.ir a year's work in Western Australia (White 1981 ). That same year saw
Diamond Jenness, an Oxonian from New Zealand whose sister had married
a missionary in the D'Entrecasteaux, off to Goodenough Island (Jenness &
Ballantyne 1920). Two young Finns followed Edward Westermarck to England to work under Haddon's tutelage in "the intensive study of limited areas"
(GS 1979a): Gunnar Landtman went to New Guinea for two years to explore
in depth the Kiwai area Haddon and his colleagues had surveyed in 1898
(Landtman 1927); Rafael Karsten worked among three tribes of the Bolivian
Gran Chaco in 1911 and 1912 (Karsten 1932). The group included also two
Oxford-trained women: Barbara Freire-Marreco, who worked among the Pueblo
in the American Southwest (Freire-Marreco 1916), and Marie Czaplicka
(another Polish emigre) who spent a strenuous year on the Arctic Circle in
Siberia working among the Tungus (Czaplicka 1916). And when Malinowski
went to the southeastern Papuan coast to follow up another Torres Straits
survey in the fall of 1914, yet another offspring of the Cambridge School,
John Layard, was settling in for two years' work in Atchin off the coast of
Malekula (1942).
Thus by the outbreak of the Great War it could already be said that field-
84
GEORGE
W.
STOCKING,
Ja.
J'
work was to anthropology "as the blood of martyrs is to the Roman CatholiO:
Church" (Seligman, as quoted in Firth 1963:2). The failure of these othe,
early "intensive studies" to figure more prominently in the myth-history o(i,
British anthropology (Richards 1939) is perhaps in part a reflection of bio
graphical accident and institutional circumstance. Both Karsten and Jenness
were soon caught up in further "intensive" (and extended) studies in quite
different (and difficult) areas-among the Peruvian Jibaro and the Canadian
Eskimo, respectively (Karsten 1935; Jenness 1922-23). Landtman's field
notes were actually lost in shipwreck; it was only by hiring a diver that he
was able to salvage the trunk that contained them (Landtman 1927:ix). Lay
ard returned from Malekula to suffer an extended incapacitation from mental
distress (Langham 1981:204). Hocart came back from Fiji to serve four years
as captain on active duty in France (Needham 1967). Czaplicka died young
in 1921 (Marett 1921). Although several of them had successful careers,
none of them (save, belatedly, Radcliffe-Brown) established himself in British
academic life. Jenness emigrated to Canada, where he eventually succeeded
Edward Sapir as director of the anthropological division of the Canadian
Geological Survey (Swayze 1960). Karsten and Landtman returned to take
up professorial positions in Finland (NRC 1938:157). Hocart, an unsuccessful competitor of Radcliffe-Brown's for the chair in anthropology at Sydney
(BMPL: Seligman/BM 3/18/24), came no closer to a major academic position
than the chair in sociology at Cairo (Needham 1967). Layard became involved in Jungian psychology (Layard 1944); Wheeler, the co-author with
Hobhouse and Ginsberg of the Material Culture of Primitive Peoples (1915),
seems to have left anthropology for the translation of travel accounts from
the Danish (ACHP: CW/ACH 12/23/39). Even Malinowski had trouble
finding a place in academic life; as late as 1921 he was considering returning
to Poland (BMPL: Seligman/BM 8/30/21), and it was only with Seligman's
help (including a quiet subvention of his salary) that he was able to establish
himself at the London School of Economics (COS/BM 1921-24).
Something more than delayed or institutionally marginal careers would
seem to be involved, however, in the lapsed remembrance of these other
academic ethnographers of Malinowski's generation. Although some of them
(notably Hocart) are revealed in their fieldnotes as extremely sensitive and
reflective practical methodologists (AMHP:reel 9, passim), their early monographs did not present them as self-conscious ethnographic innovators. The
closest approximation to Malinowski's Argonauts is Landtman's flat-footedly
descriptive (and rather cumbrously titled) Kiwai Papuans of British New Guinea:
A Nature-Born Instance of Rousseau's Ideal Community (1927). Insofar as one
can infer from its photographic representation, and from his long letters to
Haddon from the field, Landtman's ethnographic situation seems roughly
analogous to that of Malinowski in the Trobriands. But although he recorded
85
11hNtrvational data, Landtman conceived his method primarily in terms of

working closely with individual (and paid) informants (or, more aptly in one
lr11tr to Haddon, "teachers" [ACHP: GUACH 8/28110]). Although he did
lrnrn some Kiwai, and wrote a perceptive little essay on the nature of pidgin
llN a language in its own right (1927:453-61), the many quoted passages in
hi" ethnography make it clear that he worked primarily in the latter tongue.
I liN efforts, nonetheless, were favorably viewed by the Kiwai ("this white man
hr another kind, all same me fellow" [ACHP: GUACH 4/4/11]), and ulti11111tcly received Malinowski's imprimatur as well. If Malinowski failed to
flltntion in his review (1929b) that this "master of the modem sociological
nwthod in fieldwork" had entered the field five years before his own arrival
In the Trobriands, his neglect was perhaps understandable. By this time Prolrssor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, Malinowski had
NlllTceded to Haddon and Rivers as the lead\ng exponent of the "intensive
~tudy of limited areas." With Argonauts by thei<I_ five years in print, the trans111rmation of a research strategy into a methodological myth had already been
nn:omplished.
RIVERS AND THE "CONCRETE" METHOD

place Malinowski's achievement in context, however, it is necessary to
look more closely at the evolution of "intensive study." If the actual ethnoJ.:raphic practice of the initiates of the Cambridge School is only indirectly
accessible, we can say with some certainty what "intensive study" was intended to be, because the man who did the most to define it published, on
the eve of Malinowski's departure for the field, several fairly explicit statements of what such work involved. That man was not Haddon, of course,
hut Rivers. Coming to ethnology from experimental psychology-one of the
more methodologically explicit areas of the human sciences-Rivers brought
with him a high degree of self-consciousness about problems of method; but
he also possessed an uninhibited (Mauss said "intrepid") explanatory imagination (1923), and was quite capable of pursuing a pet hypothesis well beyond the limits to which rigorous method could carry him. As manifested in
the far-fetched migration-theories of his History of Melanesian Society (1914a),
and in his subsequent association with the hyperdiffusionism of William Perry
and Grafton Elliot Smith, the latter tendency was seriously to compromise
his historical reputation (Langham 1981: 118-99). But during the decade or
so before his death in 1922, he was the single most influential British anthropologist. Haddon described him in 1914 as "the greatest field investigator of
primitive sociology there has ever been" (ACHP: ACH Rept. Sladen Trust1(1
86
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
ees), and his "concrete method" provided for Malinowski, as for many others,
the exemplar of sound ethnographic methodology.
Rivers' methodological contributions tend in disciplinary memory to be
subsumed within a rather narrow conception of the "genealogical method"
he developed in Torres Straits, as if all he provided was a convenient (and
some would now say questionable [Schneider 1968:13-14)) means for gathering kinship data. For Rivers, however, the study of kinship was a derived
advantage, and by no means marked the limits of the usefulness of genealogies. Although he was not the first ethnographer to collect them, Rivers'
interest seems to have stemmed from his psychological work, rather than
from any ethnographic precursors. His model was apparently the research
into human heredity carried on by the polymathic psychologist/statistician/
eugenicist Sir Francis Galton, who as anthropometrist was also one of the
leading figures in British anthropology (Pearson 1924:334-425). Prior to
departing for the Torres Straits, Rivers had consulted with Galton (FGP:
WHR/FG 114/97), and his original goal in collecting genealogies was much
the same as that which had previously motivated Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty (1883): "to discover whether those who were closely related
resembled one another in their reactions to the various psychological and
physiological tests" (WHR 1908:65). Upon realizing, however, that the genealogical memories of the islanders went back as far as three or even five
generations, Rivers "with the stimulus of Dr. Haddon's encouragement" began to collect the data for its potential sociological utility as well (1900:74-75).
Using only a few basic English categories ("father," "mother," "child,"
"husband," "wife"), Rivers tried in pidgin English, sometimes clarified (or
further complicated) by a native interpreter, to get from each informant the
personal names and marital connections of his parents, siblings, children,
and grand-relatives: "what name wife belong him?", "what piccaninny he
got?"; making sure that the terms were used in their "real" or "proper" English
(i.e., biological) sense, and did not elicit some classificatory or adoptive relative-"he proper father?", "he proper mother?" (ACH 1901:124-25). In
the context of a later sophistication as to the ambiguities of social and biological kinship, and the problematic character of all such ethnographic elicitation, the image of Rivers' ethnography-in-process given to us by Haddon
is likely itself to elicit a smile. Who knows just what meaning "proper" conveyed in the semantics of pidgin English as applied to the categories of Mabuaig kinship? (Howard 1981). To Rivers, however, the method seemed self.
correcting against error or even deliberate deception, because the same set of
relationships could be elicited on separate occasions (and even by different
observers) from different informants in the same (or overlapping) genealogies
(1899). Thus even after Rivers had returned to England, the "chief" of Mabuaig, anxious to draw up his own record "for the use and guidance of his
87
descendants," created another version (recorded and sent along by the local
trader) which save for "minor discrepancies" confirmed information previously collected by Rivers (1904:126). At the very least, there would see~ to
have been some agreement among informants as to what "proper" meant.
Rivers, however, felt no need for such benefit of doubt. Despite occasional
acknowledgments of the difficulties of "exact" translation, he managed to
convince himself that he was dealing with "bodies of dry fact ... as incapable of being influenced by bias, conscious or unconscious, as any subject
that can be imagined" (1914a, 1:3-4). Furthermore, they provided the basis
for a "scientific" approach to the reconstruction of the history of human social forms. Although in principle the genealogical method required the exclusion of native kinship categories, which tended to obscure the "real" biological relationships, Rivers' attention was inevitably focussed on the systematic
aspect of the native terms he was excluding. Thus when it came to summarizing the various personal-name genealogies for all the Mabuaig Islanders,
he used native kin terms to draw up "the genealogy of an ideal family" which
illustrated a kinship system "of the kind known as classificatory" ( 1904: 129).
In this context he was quickly led to the "rediscovery" (Fortes 1969:3) of
Lewis H. Morgan's Systems of Consanguinity (1871; cf. WHR 1907)-if such
a term is appropriate for assumptions that had been the common currency of
Australian ethnography from the time of Fison and Howitt. Rivers became
committed to the idea that the elemental social structure of any group would
be systematically revealed in its kinship terminology. While later writers have
emphasized the utility of paradigmatic models of such systems for comparative purposes (Fortes 1969:24), Rivers himself was more impressed that he
had found an area of human behavior where "the principle of determinism
applies with a rigor and definiteness equal to that of any of the exact sciences"-since "every detail" of systems of relationship could be traced back
to some prior "social condition arising out of the regulation of marriage and
sexual relations" (1914b:95). Even after he had abandoned his early "crude
evolutionary point of view" for the "ethnological [historical] analysis of culture" (1911:131-32), he continued to feel that his methods provided the
basis for reliable reconstructions of major historical sequences of human social development (1914a).
Our concern here, however, is less with how Rivers' "invention" of the
genealogical method led to a set of theoretical concerns which, subsequently
dehistoricized by Radcliffe-Brown, were to be central to later British social
anthropology (GS 1971). It is rather, insofar as it can be kept separate, with
his somewhat paradoxical contribution to the development of ethnographic
method. On the one hand, Rivers' elaboration of the genealogical method
offered a staunchly positivistic approach, a kind of "quick methodological
fix," by which scientifically trained observers, "with no knowledge of the
88
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, jR.
language and with very inferior interpreters," could "in comparatively short
time" collect information that had remained hidden from the most observant
long-term European residents, even to the point of laying bare the basic
structure of the indigenous society (1910:10). The model here is Rivers on
the deck of the Southern Cross interrogating an informant through an interpreter, during one of the brief stops of its mission circuit. But there were
other aspects of his ethnographic experience that led toward a more sophisticated longer-term "intensive study," one that might enable the scientific
observer to achieve something analogous to the more empathetic, extensively detailed, and broadly penetrating knowledge that had previously characterized the very best missionary ethnographers.
In his more confidently positivistic moments, Rivers tended to see the
genealogical (generalized as the "concrete") method as the solution to almost
every ethnographic problem. It provided a framework in which all members
of a local group could be located, and to which could be attached a broad
range of ethnographic information on "the social condition of each person
included in the pedigrees"-data on residence, totems, and clan membership, as well as miscellaneous behavioral and biographical information (1910:2).
In addition to its utility in collecting sociological data, however, it could be
used in the study of migrations, of magic and religion, of demography, of
physical anthropology, and even of linguistics. Most important, it enabled
the observer "to study abstract problems, on which the savage's ideas are
vague, by means of concrete facts, of which he is a master" (1900:82). It
even made it possible "to formulate laws regulating the lives of people which
they have probably never formulated themselves, certainly not with the
clearness and definiteness which they have to the mind trained by a more
complex civilization" (1910:9). Not only could the observing scientist delineate the actual social laws of a particular group, he could detect also how
far its ostensible social laws "were being actually followed in practice" (1910:6).
The power of the genealogical method was attested by independent observers-"men on the spot" such as G. Orde Brown, who after telling Rivers that
kinship data were unobtainable among a particular Kenyan group, was urged
to try Rivers' method: "and now I find that he was right, and that I was
completely wrong, in spite of my then three years experience of these people"
(ACHP: GOB/ACH 2/8/13). It was also evident in Rivers' fieldwork, which
although for the most part frankly of the survey variety, did indeed provide a
large amount of data in a relatively short time.
No doubt Rivers' insouciant assurance of the power of positivistic thinking
was buttressed both by traditional ethnocentric assumptions about the evolution of the capacity for abstract thought and by the experimental psychological studies he carried on in these terms (Langham 1981:56-64). But it is
worth noting that at some points he interpreted savage concreteness as due
89
to lexical rather than cognitive deficiency, and suggested that "he certainly
cannot be expected to appreciate properly the abstract terms of the language
of his visitor" (1910:9). At such moments, one feels the pull of Rivers' actual
experience toward a somewhat different ethnographic style, which while ultimately perhaps no less scientistic, implied a ~ter sensitivity to the difficulties of cultural translation and the necessity for long-term intensive study
to overcome them.
Rivers did attempt one piece of fieldwork that verged on such "intensive
study." In 1902, he went to the Nilgiri Hills of southern India to study the
Todas, whose polyandry had long made them an important ethnographic case
for the evolutionary paradigm (Rooksby 1971). Although his difficulties in
fitting Toda data within an evolutionary framework seem to have been a
factor in his subsequent "conversion" to diffusionism, Rivers presented his
results merely as a "demonstration of anthropological method" in the "collecting" and "recording" of ethnographic material (1906:v). He planned only
a six-month stay, and worked through interpreters, but his brief methodological introduction suggests that he intended his work as an "intensive study."
His many interpolated comments on how he obtained particular bits of information indicate that most of his accounts of Toda ceremony were narra
tives obtained through informants in "public" morning and "private" afternoon sessions. But he made it a point to obtain as many independently
corroborating accounts as he could and to pay only for an informant's time
rather than for particular items of information (7-17). He also moved about
observing for himself, and in at least one instance was allowed to witness one
of the most sacred Toda ceremonies. Within days, however, the wife of the
man who arranged this died. This and similar misfortunes befalling two other
Toda "guides" were ascribed by their diviners to "the anger of the gods because their secrets had been revealed to the stranger." Rivers' sources of information ran dry, and he came away from India "knowing that there were
subjects of which [he] had barely touched the fringe," and suspecting that
there were "far more numerous deficiencies" of which he was not even aware
(2-3; cf. Langham 1981:134-35, where Rivers' increasing "ethnographic
empathy" is linked to the experience of his 1908 expedition).
THE 1912 REVISION OF NOTES AND QUERIES

When the British Association established a committee to prepare a revised
edition of Notes and Queries the year after The Todas was published, Rivers,
Haddon, and Myers (joined later by Seligman) were all members. The publication that eventuated in 1912, apparently after some conflict between the
90
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
young turks and the old guard (Urry 1972:51), was in many respects a new
departure. The book was ostensibly still directed to "travellers" and non
anthropologists who might "supply the information which is wanted for the
scientific study of anthropology at home" (BAAS 1912:iii-iv). Despite the
urging of "friendly critics" who had argued the virtues of a "narrative form,"
many sections still reflected the "old lists of 'leading questions'" that had
characterized the three Tylorian editions. Nevertheless, the "friendly critics"
had clearly had a major impact. J. L. Myres, the Oxford archaeologist who
was the only contributor to author more pages, described Rivers' contribution
as "a revelation" that set a new "standard for workmanship in the field" (Urry
1972:51). It is quite evident that the "workers in the field" for whom Rivers
wrote, although lacking perhaps an "advanced knowledge in anthropology,"
were not casual travellers but people in a position to undertake "intensive
study."
The centerpiece of the whole volume, Rivers' "General Account of Method,"
may be regarded as a programmatic systematization of the ethnographic ex
perience of the "Cambridge School." The distinction between "intensive study"
and "survey" was here recast in linguistic terms. Because (as it was suggested
elsewhere in the volume) "language is our only key to the correct and com
plete understanding of the life and thought of a people" (BAAS 1912:186),
the investigator's first duty was "to acquire as completely as possible" a knowl
edge of their language (109). To that end the volume incorporated "Notes
on Learning a New Language" by the American linguistic anthropologist J. P.
Harrington-although Rivers still felt it was better to rely on an interpreter,
supplemented by native terms, than on "an inadequate knowledge of the
language" (124). While Rivers gave special prominence to the genealogical
method, its justification was now cast in rather different terms: by enabling
the inquirer "to use the very instrument which the people themselves use in
dealing with their social problems," it made it possible to study "the forma
tion and nature of their social classifications," excluding "entirely the influence of civilised categories" (119).
Although the nature of "the thought of people of the lower culture" was
still used to justify Rivers' first rule of method ("the abstract should always be
approached through the concrete"), he now placed great emphasis on the
problem of category differences: "native terms must be used wherever there
is the slightest chance of a difference of category," and "the greatest caution
must be used in obtaining information by means of direct questions, since it
is probable that such questions will inevitably suggest some civilised cate
gory" (110-11). Similarly, special attention must be paid to volunteered in
formation, even if it interrupted one's train of thought: instead of complain
ing of the difficulty of keeping an informant to the point, the investigator
91
should recognize that "the native also has a point, probably of far more interest than his own" (112).
Rivers' "investigator" was still more an "inquirer" than an "observer," but
he was strongly encouraged to get the corroboration of "two or more independent witnesses," and cautioned also that disagreements among them were
"one of the most fruitful sources of knowledge"-"a man who will tell you
nothing spontaneously often cannot refrain from correcting false information" (113). Wherever possible he was to supplement verbal accounts with
the actual witnessing of ceremonies, and "to take advantage of any events of
social importance which occur during your stay," since "the thorough study
of a concrete case in which social regulations have been broken may give
more insight ... than a month of questioning" (116). Last but not least, the
inquirer was to develop "sympathy and tact," without which "it is certain
that the best kind of work will never be done." Although urged on grounds
of expedience ("people of rude culture are so unaccustomed to any such evidence of sympathy with their ways of thinking and acting" that it would "go
far to break down their reticence"), Rivers cautioned that natives would be
"quick to recognize whether this sympathy was real and not feigned" (125).
To suggest that the new ethnographic orientation embodied in the 1912
Notes and Queries clearly reflected the field experience of a new breed of
academician-cum-ethnographer is not to say that it was unrelated to developments in anthropological theory. A sense of crisis in evolutionary theory
had been evident in Great Britain as early as the mid-1890s, when Tylor,
responding to Boas' critique of "The Comparative Method of Anthropology,"
had suggested the need for "tightening the logical screw" (GS 1968b:211).
The malaise was particularly evident in relation to the study of religion,
where Andrew Lang's defection from the Tylorian camp (1901), R. R. Marett's interpretation of Codrington's Melanesian "mana" as a pre-animistic religious phenomenon (Marett 1900), and the debates precipitated by Spencer
and Gillen's Arunta data (Frazer 1910) all contributed to a strong feeling
that something was wrong with both the categories and the data in terms of
which armchair anthropologists were interpreting primitive religion. This
discomfort was reflected in the revised Notes and Queries in an essay by Marett (never himself a field ethnographer) on "the study of magico-religious
facts" (BAAS 1912:251-60). The hyphenation was both a reflection of the
fact that "framers of general theory" were "in dispute" and an exhortation to
the ethnographer to collect data from the "point of view" of primitive folk,
"uncoloured by his own" (251). Eschewing questionnaires, Marett argued
that "the real scheme of topics . . . must be framed by the observer himself
to suit the social conditions of a given tribe" (255). The obsen er must not
ask "why" but "what," focussing on the rite in all its complex concrete de-
92
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
tail-"at the same time keeping at ann's length our own theological concepts, as well as our anthropological concepts, which are just as bad, since
they have been framed by us to make us understand savagery, not by savagery
to enable it to understand itself" (259). ln this context, then, the "concrete
method" was not simply a means of getting at abstractions that the savage
could not himself articulate, but a way of collecting "concrete facts" uncontaminated by European evolutionary abstractions that had come to seem more
than a bit problematic.
As a kind of footnote to the new edition of Notes and Queries, Rivers in
1913 published a statement on the needs of ethnography in which he further
elaborated certain aspects of "intensive study" that may have seemed inappropriate to argue in the earlier collaborative effort. In specifying just what
type of anthropological research was most pressingly urgent, Rivers narrowed
and refined the conception of intensive study that had emerged in the work
of the Cambridge School. On the one hand, he explicitly subordinated certain traditional concerns of a general anthropology, either because their data
were less immediately endangered (in the case of archeology) or because pursuing them risked destroying the rapport necessary for intensive sociological
study (in the case of material culture and physical anthropology [WHR 1913:56, 13]). Similarly, because of the "disturbance and excitement produced among
natives by the various activites of the different members of an expedition,"
he now urged that ethnographic work should be carried on by single inves, tigators "working alone" ( 10-11). As further justification, he argued that the
labor of ethnography should be undivided because its subject matter was indivisible. In a rude culture (and there are several indications that he now
thought of culture in the plural), the domains civilized men designated as
politics, religion, education, art, and technology were interdependent and
inseparable, and it followed that "specialism in the collection of ethnographic details must be avoided at all costs" (11). Rivers did insist, however,
on the specialization of the ethnographer's role itself: because government
officials and missionaries had little time after the performance of their regular
duties, because they lacked appropriate training, and because their occupations brought them into conflict with native ideas and customs (even, in the
case of missionaries, to the point of embracing the "duty to destroy" them),
Rivers now felt that ethnography was best carried on by "private workers,"
preferably with special training or experience "in exact methods in other
sciences" (9-10). Such were the preconditions of "intensive work," which
Rivers defined as that "in which the worker lives for a year or more among a
community of perhaps four or five hundred people and studies every detail of
their life and culture; in which he comes to know every member of the community personally; in which he is not content with generalized information,
93
hut studies every feature of life and custom in concrete detail and by means
of the vernacular language" (7).
That, one might suggest, was just what Malinowski did in the Trobriands.
Malinowski's enactment of Rivers' program was, however, more than a mat
ter of taking the new Notes and Queries into the field and following instructions. It involved a shift in the primary locus of investigation, from the deck
of the mission ship or the verandah of the mission station to the teeming
center of the village, and a corresponding shift in the conception of the
ethnographer's role, from that of inquirer to that of participant "in a way" in
village life. It also required a shift in theoretical orientation, since as long as
"the aim of anthropology [was) to teach us the history of mankind" (WHR
1913:5) the bustle of village activity could have only mediate rather than
intrinsic interest. And finally, it required not only enactment but embodiment-or precisely the sort of mythic transformation Malinowski provided.
MALINOWSKI FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM

TO MAILU
Before his mythopoeic ethnographic experience in the Trobriands, Malinowski himself had served an apprenticeship as armchair anthropologist. His
introduction to anthropology had in fact come when, during a period of
medically enforced withdrawal from chemical and physical research, he read
(or had read to him by his mother OGFP: BM/JGF 5/25/23)) the second
edition of Frazer's Golden Bough (1900). Complicated as it is by a complexly
motivated rhetorical inflation, Malinowski's debt to Frazer has been a matter
of debate (Jarvie 1964; Leach 1966; cf. BM 1923, 1944). He later spoke of
having been immediately "bound to the service of Frazerian anthropology" "a great science, worthy of as much devotion as any of her elder and more
exact sister studies" (1926a:94). There is no doubt a link between the epistemological concerns of Malinowski's doctoral dissertation at the University
of Cracow (Paluch 1981) and the warp threads of magic, religion, and science on which Frazer wove his rich tapestry of transfigured ethnographic
detail. But Malinowski had chosen Frazer as a "masterpiece" of English literary style, and his mere convincing acknowledgments reflect his apprecia
tion of Frazer's compelling representation of exotic but generically human
experience within a vividly recreated landscape (JGFP: BMIJGF 10/25/17)the "scene/act ratio" which, according to the literary critic Stanley Hyman
(1959:201, 225, 254), provided the "imaginative core" of Frazer's work, and
was later strikingly evident in Malinowski's Argonauts.
94
GEORGE w. STOCKING, JR.
From a literary viewpoint Malinowski's anthropology may be regarded as

a seedling of the Golden Bough. And there are no doubt also substantive and
even theoretical concerns in which the bond to Frazerian anthropology is
evident (BM 1944). But from a more general methodological and theoretical
viewpoint, the differences are clear enough. Carrying forward the tradition
of armchair speculation from within the very precincts of the Cambridge
School, Frazer defended his questionnaire in the face of Rivers' "concrete
method" (JGFP: JGF/J. Roscoe 5/12/07). During the decade after 1900 when
his (somewhat disapproving) master Tylor had begun to withdraw into senes
cence, theoretical debate in British anthropology swirled around the issues
Frazer used to give thematic focus to his literary efforts: the nature of primitive religion, and particularly the problem of totemism-on which Frazer by
1910 had offered three different "theories," all of which were incorporated
into his four-volume compendium on Totemism and Exogamy (cf. Hyman
1959:214-15). By that time, the theoretical malaise in British anthropology
was becoming acute. One consequence was a generally heightened sense of
ethnographic urgency-the previously noted feeling that received ethnographic categories were somehow inadequate, and that what was needed was
a new body of data unencumbered by theoretical assumption. But evolutionary theory itself had by now been called into question. Rivers was shortly to
announce his "conversion" to an "historical" diffusionary point of view (1911),
and Radcliffe-Brown had already begun the Durkheimian reworking of his
Andaman data which, in the context of subsequent debates with Rivers, led
him to tum away from diachronic problems almost entirely (GS 1971).
At this point Malinowski, after a year at Leipzig where he studied with
the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt and the economic historian Karl Bucher,
came to England to study anthropology (KS 1958-60). Introduced by Haddon to Seligman, he entered the more cosmopolitan (and sociological) Lon
don School of Econom~cs, where he became a student of both Seligman and
Westermarck. Carrying on extensive library research in the British Museum,
Malinowski entered actively into the ongoing discussion of totemism, start
ing with a critique of Frazer's interpretation of the intichiuma ceremony (1912),
continuing with a brief review of Durkheim's Elementary Forms ( 1913b), and
culminating with his still untranslated Polish publication on Primitive Beliefs
and Forms of Social Organzation: A View on the Genesis of Religion with Special
Respect to Totemism (l915b). While these pieces are all still contained within
the general framework of evolutionary assumption, there is another that re
fleets the ongoing shift from ultimate origins and long-term diachronic development toward more specifically historical or purely synchronic problems.
Regarded from a substantive point of view, Malinowski's Family among the
Australian Aborigines (l913a) is an attempt, following the line pioneered by
his teacher Westermarck (1891), to attack such evolutionary warhorses as
95
"primitive promiscuity" and "marriage by capture," as well as the whole Mor

ganian notion of the "classificatory system of kinship," on the basis of a systematic analysis of all the available literature from the ethnographic realm
that provided evolutionists like Frazer with their type case of truly "primitive
man." Constructively, the book is Malinowski's most Durkheimian work: his
primary concern is to demonstrate the interrelation both of the idea of kin
ship and of the family as a social institution with "the general structure of
society" (l913a:300). At the same time, it may also be regarded as a methodological exercise-another attempt to tighten Tylor's "logical screw." Malinowski shows a notable (some would say uncharacteristic) concern with the
definition of analytic categories not "directly borrowed from our own society"
(168). And he is even more systematically concerned with developing rigorous method in the evaluation of ethnographic evidence. In doing so, he
turns to history in a quite technical and professional sense, using Langlois
and Seignobos' historiographical text (1898) as a model for the treatment of
the major Australian ethnographic sources by "the strict rules of historical
criticism," and analyzing conflicting testimony so that future fieldwork might
be focussed on key issues of fact (1913a: 19). That same focus toward the field
is evident in his already somewhat critical view of Durkheimian sociology,
which he tended to regard as a closet philosophy hypostatizing a metaphysical
"collective mind" to the neglect of the activities of real human individuals
(19 l3b). Malinowski felt that Durkheimian interpretation was constrained
by the "complete absence in our ethnographic information of any attempt to
connect the data of folk-lore and the facts of sociology" (l913a:233), or as
he sometimes was inclined to pose it, "social belief" and "social function"a term which in Malinowski's often rather unDurkheimian usage tended to
mean "actual behavior." From this point of view, the Australian monograph
is not so much an armchair exercise as the prolegomenon to Malinowski's
future fieldwork.
His entry into the field, however, was delayed by exigencies of funding.
From 1911 on Seligman, along with Haddon and Rivers (from both of whom
Malinowski also received guidance), pursued various possible fieldwork sites,
including the Sudan, to which Seligman's own interests had shifted (BMPL:
BM/CGS 2/22/12), and faute de mieux, back in Poland "among our peasants"
(ACHP: BM/ACH 11/12111). However, it was not until 1914, when the
British Association met in Australia, that Seligman got Malinowski a travelling fellowship, and he received his fare to the Orient as secretary of the
Association's anthropological section. His introduction to the field after the
August meetings was clearly designed by Seligman to focus more intensively
on the boundary region between two major ethnic groups his own earlier
survey work had distinguished (1910:2, 24-25; Firth 1975). Malinowski began by working in Port Moresby with Ahuia Ova, a village constable who
96
GEORGE
w STOCKING, JR.
had served as Seligman's primary informant in conversations "held on the

verandah of the house where he lived with his uncle Taubada, the old chief
of Hododai" (Seligman 1910:ix; BMPL: BM/COS 9/10/14; Williams 1939).
Malinowski quickly became dissatisfied, however, with these "ethnographic explorations," on grounds that foreshadow his later ethnographic mode:
"( 1) I have rather little to do with the savages on the spot, do not observe
them enough and (2) I do not speak their language" (1967:13). The latter
defect he seems to have remedied when he settled down for more intensive
research on the island of Mailu. By the time he left in late January he was
quite fluent in the lingua franca of the area (Motu)-an accomplishment
sufficiently remarkable that, lest it be discredited, he felt it necessary in his
published account "to explicitly boast of my facility for acquiring a conversational command of foreign languages" (1915a:501). The problem of observation "on the spot" was not so easily solved: throughout the Mailu diary,
Malinowski's days begin with the phrase "went to the village." There are
momentary glimpses, however, of a more intimate ethnographic style. On a
trip he made in early December surveying groups along the far southeastern
coast, he stayed in several villages in the dubu or men's house-on one occasion for three successive nights during a native feast. Although "the stench,
smoke, noise of people, dogs and pigs" left him exhausted, Malinowski clearly
had a sense of the ethnographic potential of a more direct involvement, and
returned to Mailu resolved that he "must begin a new existence" (1967:49,
54-55).
Malinowski later suggested that the next few weeks on Mailu, when the
absence of the local missionary left him "quite alone with the natives," were
his most productive period on Mailu (1915a:501). One would hardly guess
this from his diary, where he recounts being left with "absolutely nobody" for
more than a week because he foolishly refused to pay the 2 the Mailu demanded to allow him to accompany them on a trading expedition (1967:62).
But one must pose against such private records of frustration some of the
material from the published Mailu ethnography-which, one may note in
passing, still strongly reflects the categories of the new edition of Notes and
Queries Malinowski carried with him into the field. Recounting how he overcame difficulties in getting at "magico-religious" beliefs, Malinowski tells how
at a certain point the Mailu became convinced that the deserted mission
house in which he stayed was ghost-ridden. His "cook boy" and some village
men who used to sleep there stopped doing so. Later, when one evening the
conversation turned to ghosts, Malinowski, professing his ignorance of such
matters, asked their advice, and got a great deal of information about topics
previously closed to him. Generalizing in the published account, he commented: "My experience is that direct questioning of the native about a custom or belief never discloses their attitude of mind as thoroughly as the dis-
97
cussion of facts connected with the direct observation of a custom or with a

concrete occurence, in which both parties are materially concerned"
(l915a:650-52). Implicit in that last phrase was the essence of a fieldwork
style significantly different from that formalized by Rivers in Notes and Queries.
Malinowski was by no means entirely satisfied with his Mailu research
(ACHP: BM/ACH 10/15/15). Analyzing his data in Melbourne in the spring
of 1915, he decided that work done alone with the natives was "incomparably more intensive than work done from white men's settlements, or even
in any white man's company; the nearer one lives to a village and the more
he sees actually of the natives the better" (1915a:501). The obvious conclusion was that he should live in the village. But as those nights in the dubu
testify, total immersion was not easy for him. It has been argued that a solution was suggested to him during his brief stay on Woodlark Island early in
1915 (Wax 1972:7), where he lived "in a tent of palm leaves" only sixty
meters from the village-"happy to be alone again with N. G. boys(,] particularly when I sat alone ... gazing at the village ... " (1967:92). The ethnographer's tent-fragile canvas artifact of civilized Europe-embodied a similar
ambivalence. Pulling its flaps behind him, he could to some extent shut out
the native world and retire to his novels when the strain of the very intensive
study of a very limited area became too great.
THE TROBRIANDS: FROM RIDER HAGGARD

TO CONRAD
With financial support from the Australian government that had nominally
interned him (Laracy 1976), Malinowski was off to the field again in June
1915. Although Seligman wanted him to go to Rossel Island to examine
another of the "three points of the Massim triangle" (BMPL: COS/BM n.d. ),
Malinowski set off for the Mambare district on the northern coast of New
Guinea (BM/COS 5/6/15). He decided, however, to stop on the way on
Kiriwina in the Trobriands, where Seligman had once worked briefly, because
they were "the leaders of the whole material and artistic culture" of the area
(BM/COS 6/13/15). Although totally "pacified" for more than a decade, the
Trobriands were, compared to many island and coastal areas of New Guinea,
relatively unacculturated. Malinowski arrived during the season of the milamala festival, the ceremonial high point of the annual cycle, and his attention was immediately engaged by the phenomena that were to be the subjects
of his later monographs: the "ceremonial gardening," the "beliefs and ceremonies about the spirits," and their "peculiar and interesting" system of trading (BM/COS 7/30/15). In the Trobriands-in contrast to the islands of the
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GEORGE
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Torres Straits-these did not have to be recaptured from the memories of

elders, or reconstructed from fragmentary data surviving into the present, or
recreated by people cajoled into performing defunct ceremonies. Here they
could be directly observed. More than that, this was apparently one of those
cases where there was a close "fit" between ethnographer and subject-Mal
inowski later contrasted the relative ease of his work in Kiriwina with diffi
culties he encountered elsewhere (1967:227). At the time, he was clearly
captivated. When he received news of the unexpected departure of the Mam
bare missionary from whom he had hoped to get an ethnographic orienta
tion, he extended his Trobriand stay, apologizing to Seligman for remaining
in an area he had already covered. By mid-October, when he fired his inter
preter, Malinowski. already had enough Kiriwinian that for three weeks he
had only used pidgin English "a sentence or so per diem." Having moved
inland from the government station to the village of Omarakana, he wrote
to Seligman that he was "absolutely alone amongst niggers [sic]." Denying
himself both whiskey and "the other 'white man's solace,'" he was getting
"such damned good stuff" that he had decided not to go to Mambare after all
(9/24, 10/19/15). Save for any fortnightly "Capuan days" he may have en
joyed back on the coast in Gusaweta (1967:259), he apparently remained in
Omarakana for almost six months.
This is not the place to attempt to answer all the questions raised about
Malinowski's fieldwork by the "revelations" of his diaries-Joycean docu
ments whose adequate interpretation awaits a detailed indexing and contex
tualization with other materials. Perhaps because they are not primarily "about"
his fieldwork, they do not in any case treat his first Trobriand expedition
(1967:99). The present account will depend primarily on other source ma
terials. We know from later reflections that despite dispensing with an inter
preter, Malinowski was not yet able to "follow easily conversations among
the natives themselves" (1935, 1:453). We know also that he was still very
much under Rivers' methodological influence: "it was my ambition to de
velop the principle of the 'genealogical method' into a wider and more am
bitious scheme to be entitled the 'method of objective documentation"' (1935,
1:326; WHRP: BM/WHR 10/15/15). For contemporary evidence of his
methodological concerns, the best source is Baloma: The Spirits of the Dead in
the Trobriands (1916), which he wrote during the interval between his first
and second Trobriand trips.
Despite the suggestion of one critic that Malinowski's (actually, Marett's)
slogan was "study the ritual and not the belief" (Jarvie 1964:44), and despite
his characterization as an "obsessional empiricist" (Leach 1957:120), what is
striking in Baloma is precisely the attempt to penetrate native belief, and his
insistence on the inadequacy of any uninterpreted "pure facts" -and by im
plication Rivers' "concrete method"-to the task (cf. Panoff 1972:43-45).
99
Baloma reveals Malinowski as an aggressively interactive fieldworker. In contrast to Notes and Queries, he defends the use of leading questions under
certain circumstances (1916:264); he questions beliefs the natives take for
granted (208); he suggests alternative possibilities (227-28); he forces them
on apparent contradictions (167); he pushes them, as he says, "to the metaphysical wall" (236)-and is upon occasion pushed towards it himself. Rejecting the notion that it was "possible to wrap up in a blanket a certain
number of 'facts as you find them' and bring them all back for the home
student to generalize upon," he insists that "field work consists only and exclusively in the interpretation of the chaotic social reality, in subordinating
it to general rules" (238). In at least one critical instance, this approach
seems to have led Malinowski astray: his trader friend Billy Hancock later
wrote him indicating that the natives never corrected an early interpretation
of the reincarnation of the Baloma because they were afraid to "contradict
the doctor" (GS 1977). But Malinowski's ethnographic style seems also to
have generated a large and variegated body of data. In marked contrast to
the ethnographic notes of Haddon, which contain a disproportionate amount
of second-hand material, derived either from printed sources or correspondence with "men on the spot" (ACHP:passim), and with those of Rivers,
which tend to have the schematic character one might expect of the "concrete method" (WHRP:passim), Malinowski's fieldnotes are richly documented in the materials of his own observation, recorded to a considerable
extent in the native language (BMPL:passim).
From a substantive point of view Baloma is a treatise on the relation of
individual to collective belief; viewed methodologically, it is an attempt to
deal in a general way with the problems posed by this mass of information,
and particularly with the problem of informant variation-a problem that in
the positivistic Riversian mode was reduced to insignificance. How was one
to synthesize as one "belief'' the "always fragmentary" and "at times hopelessly inadequate and contradictory" answers to the question "How do the
natives imagine the return of the baloma?" (1916:241) Temperamentally disinclined to allow them to contradict him rather than each other, Malinowski's solution-arrived at ex post facto in the analysis of his field data-was
to distinguish between "social ideas or dogmas" (beliefs embodied in institutions, customs, rites, and myths, which, "believed and acted upon by all,"
were absolutely standardized), "the general behavior of the natives towards
the object of a belief," and opinions or interpretations that might be offered
by individuals, groups of specialists, or even the majority of the members of a
community (245, 252-53). Some such distinction between cultural idea and
individual opinion, often overlaid with one between "rules and regularities"
and actual behavior, was characteristic of all Malinowski's later methodological prescriptions, as well as his more theoretically oriented ethnographic
100
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writings (cf. 1922:24). Often seen as anti-Durkheimian, it was anti-Riversian

as well. Though it apparently privileged a customary or institutional realm
where native belief was homogeneous, it gave tremendous weight to the conflict of cultural rule and individual impulse which made savage society "not
a consistent logical scheme, but rather a seething mixture of conflicting principles" ( 1926b: 121).
After a year and a half in Australia, Malinowski left for the Trobriands
again late in October 1917. The fact that he returned is itself methodologically
significant. Shortly after arriving back in Sydney in 1916, Malinowski was
still thinking in terms of pursuing Seligman's Rossel Island project as soon as
he "worked out the Trobriand material" (ACHP: BM/ACH 5/25/16). But it
is clear that his understanding of the demands of "intensive study" evolved
in the interim, and when official permission to visit Rossel was denied, he
was free to return to Kiriwina (Laracy 1976). Writing to Frazer en route back,
he noted how "whilst in the field, ... the more elementary aspects" of many
subjects "become soon so familiar they escape notice"; at the same time,
"once away from the natives," memory could not take the place of "direct
observation." He had therefore spent much of the Australian interim going
through all his material to create a "condensed outline," which had opened
"a whole series of new questions" he now needed to pursue (JGFP: BM/JGF
10/25/17).
Although he did not settle this time in Omarakana, Malinowski's return
to the same area, after having left it for an extended period, may also (if the
experience of many other anthropologists applies) have helped to cement
more closely his relationships with Trobriand informants. These were scarcely
the relationships of "social parity" that one retrospective (and distinctly
American democratic) commentator has suggested are a condition of participant-observation (Wax 1972:8). Malinowski's retinue of two or three New
Guinean "boys" (one of whom on at least one occasion he seems to have
struck [BM 1967:250]) does indeed call up images of the colonial "petty
lordship" manifest also in some of his diary fantasies (140, 167, 235). But in
a stratified society like the Trobriands (where the chief sat upon a platform
so commoners need not crawl upon the ground in passing [Wax 1972:5; cf.
BM 1929a:32-33]), social parity-which bears a problematic relationship to
understanding-is itself a rather problematic notion. That Malinowski, in
return for half a tobacco stick a day, was allowed to pitch his tent in the
restricted central area of Omarakana (1935, 1:41), that he was apparently
addressed in terms connoting high rank (1929a:61), and doubtless did not
walk bent-backed in front of his next-door neighbor, the village chief To'uluwa,
may have opened up more areas of Trobriand life to him than any other
readily available status-even as it also may have in some respects distorted
his perspective (cf. Weiner 1976).
101
Malinowski at work, Omarakana. "Feeling of ownership: it is I who will describe them or

create them .... This island, though not 'discovered' by me, is for the first time experienced
artistically and mastered intellectually" (Malinowski 1967:140 [December 1, 1917), 236 [March
26, 1918)). Courtesy Mrs. Helena Wayne and the London School of Economics.
The critical issues would seem to be the mode of interaction and the
quality of relationships he was able to establish. Insofar as the activity of the
fieldworker may be divided into different modes (participation, observation,
and interrogation [Wax 1972: 12) )-or perhaps more neutrally, doing, seeing,
and talking), it is certainly true that Malinowski (like every other fieldworker
since?) gathered more information by the last two than by the first. But one
might argue that from the point of view of gathering information, participation is to some extent a contextual phenomenon-as the often very brief
references to his actual fieldwork in the diary of the second Trobriand trip
suggest: "I went to a garden and talked with the Teyava people of gardening
and garden magic" (1967:276). In the case of frequently sparer references
such as "buritila'ul.o in Wakayse-Kabwaku" (291), it is even harder to say just
what went on. That is the sole reference in the diary to a major event in his
fieldwork, a competitive food-display recounted in some detail in Coral Gar-
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GEORGE
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STOCKING, JR.
dens and Their Magic (1935, 1:181-87). Although the diary indicates that a
good bit of Malinowski's "talking" was in one-to-one sessions with informants
compensated by tobacco, it is evident throughout his ethnographies that much
of it was in the context of events he observed and ceremonies at which
he "assisted"-a vague term, perhaps reflecting the meaning of the French
assister, but appropriately chosen by Malinowski to imply a certain degree of
participation. There were many situations in which his participation was
severely limited indeed. His diary reveals him as always left on the beach
when the natives left on a Kula expedition (1967:234, 245)-and Argonauts
suggests why: when an expedition Malinowski had been allowed to join late
in 1915 was forced back by adverse winds, To'uluwa attributed this bad luck
to his presence (1922:479). But if he was sometimes forced to rely on simple
question and answer, Malinowski clearly regarded this as a distinctly inferior
style of work. Although he felt that concrete documentation and the collection of texts were essential components of a correct style, his methodological
ideal-frequently realized in practice-remained that established in Mailu:
discussion with one or more informants of a mutually (if differently) experienced activity or event. Only thus could one "integrate native behavior into
native significance" (1935, 1:86).
As far as the quality of his relationships with the Trobrianders is concerned, it is a serious mistake to judge these simply on the basis of a selective
reading of the more negative sections of the diary (Hsu 1979). Without minimizing the pervasive tone of loneliness, frustration, and aggression or the
evolutionary racial terms in which these feelings were often expressed, without denying the explicit racial epithets, 2 one must keep in mind, as I have
argued elsewhere (1968a), that the diary functioned as a safety valve for
2. On the basis of the facsimile page of the Polish original reproduced as frontispiece of the
published translation of Malinowski's diaries (BM 1967), it has been argued (Leach 1980) that
"nigger" is an inappropriate translation of the actual term Malinowski used: nigrami. I was assured
by my one-time student Edward Martinek, who did research on Malinowski in a number of
archives in Cracow, Poland, that nigrami is not properly a Polish word. What Malinowski seems
to have done is to render the English racial epithet phonetically ("nigr") and add the Polish
ending "-ami," which I am told by Norbert Guterman, the translator of the diaries, indicates the
instrumental case (cf. KS 1982). That Malinowski knew and used the English epithet at the
time of the Trobriand diary is evident in several sources quoted in this paper. The significance
of his usage is a complex matter (cf. GS 1968b). It is certainly not to be taken casually as "proof'
of thoroughgoing racism. But neither will it do to argue that the word did not then have derogatory racial meaning. Spencer's reaction to Gillen's usage suggests otherwise. An unpublished
fragment of Haddon's from the 1890s speaks of "niggers" as "a term of reproach which implies a
hatred and superciliousness similar to that with which the Jews regard the Gentiles, the Greeks
the Barbarians, and which the Chinese still hold for 'foreign devils"' (ACHP:[l894)). Indeed,
as early as 1858 Sir Henry Maine reproved those who "contemned the idiosyncracies of their
dark-skinned fellow-creatures: If an Englishman thinks and talks of a Hindqo as a Nigger, what
103
feelings Malinowski was unable or unwilling to express in his daily relations.

At the level of methodological principle, Malinowski insisted on the critical
importance of "personal friendships [to] encourage spontaneous confidences
and the repetition of intimate gossip" (l929a:282-83). How "real" these
friendships were is too complex an issue to venture on here. One may assume
that they shared the inherent ambiguity and asymmetry of almost all ethnographic relations (cf. the suggestive remarks of Forge 1967). But it is surely
presuming a great deal to characterize him as "an anthropologist who hates
the natives" (Hsu 1979:521).
As for the Trobrianders' reaction to him, we can be sure that when they
were wearied by his questions or hurt by his occasional angry outbursts, they
rebuffed him. But any number of details in both the diary and the ethnographies-particularly The Sexual Life of Savages, which is the most revealing of
the imponderabilia of his daily ethnographic behavior-testify that he was
usually on fairly good terms with them. Clearly, it would be a mistake to take
at face value the ironic passage in Argonauts where he suggests that he was
accepted as a necessary nuisance "mitigated by donations of tobacco" (1922:6;
cf. Young 1979:14-15). The number of his informants {who frequently appear, one may note, as identifiable individuals in the ethnographies), the
kayaku or congregations in his tent (1967:103), the magic offered for him
during illness (l 922:244), the numerous sexual confidences (l 929a:passim),
suggest something more than a necessary nuisance. No doubt he remained in
Trobriand minds a European, set apart from them by many things-some of
them rather subtle and even paradoxical, like his encyclopedic collection of
private magic, of which no Trobriander commanded more than a small fragment (l929a:373). But he was clearly a European of a special sort-as was
evident in their surprise that he, so unmissionary in other respects, should
have argued the "missionary view" of physiological paternity (l929a:l87). It
was evident even after his death, when he was still remembered as "the man
of songs" (Hogbin 1946 )-doubtless from the times when in order to frighten
away mulukwausi, or flying witches, he sang "kiss my ass" to melodies from
Wagner (1967:157).
Distracted by all that venting of negative affect, one may neglect the
insights his diaries offer into Malinowski's ultimate ethnographic purpose. In
the Mailu diary, Malinowski was still greatly under the influence of Rivers,
whom he described to Haddon in 1916 as his "patron sain[t] in fieldwork"
will be his ideas of a Bheel or a Khond?" (Maine 1858:129). These examples suggest that the
key to usage lies in the geography of race relations. Nigrami does not appear in Malinowski's fint
New Guinea diary, nor does "niggers" in the letters of this period, but only after he had spenr
several years on the colonial periphery.
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GEORGE
w. STOCKING, }R.
(ACHP: BM/ACH 5/25/16). In contrast, the second Trobriand diary reveals

Malinowski frequently in debate with Rivers, not only in his "concrete"
methodological but also in his "historical" interpretive mode ( 1967:114, 161,
229, 254, 280). If the History of Melanesian Society was to be the outcome of
the tum from evolution to history, then the place of diachronic approaches
in ethnological inquiry seemed problematic indeed. Unlike Rivers, who was
(at this point in his career) willing to put aside psychological problems (1916),
Malinowski both by temperament and ethnographic experience was impelled
toward them. He did not reject history entirely-as late as 1922 he was still
talking about doing a migration study in the Riversian mode (1922:232). But
it is clear already in Baloma, and quite explicit in the early pages of the
Trobriand diary, that psychological problems were "the deepest essence of
[his) investigations": "to discover what are [the native's) main passions, the
motives for his conduct, his aims, ... his essential deepest way of thinking"
(1967:119). At this point, he saw himself "back to Bastian"-or, in an English context, perhaps to Frazer. But in contrast to the evolutionists, Malinowski's social psychology was grounded not in some hypothetical diachronic
sequence, but in the ongoing events of a contemporary ethnographic situation, closely observed by a method that sought to probe more deeply than
Rivers ever had. The contrast was suggested in ideas he recorded for the
preface to his planned ethnography: "Oan) Kubary as a concrete [i.e., Riversian] methodologist; Mikluho-Maclay as a new type. Marett's comparison:
early ethnographers as prospectors" (1967:155; cf. Tumarkin 1982). It is in the
context of this implied contrast between the surveying of an ethnographic
surface and the mining of its deeper psychological meaning-as well as that
of transforming national identity-that one must gloss Malinowski's reported
proclamation of his ultimate anthropological ambition: "Rivers is the Rider
Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad" (Firth ed. 1957:6; cf.
BMPY:BMIB. Seligman 6/21118; cf. Kirschner 1968; Langham 1981:171-77).
ARGONAUTS AS EUHEMERIST MYTH

That self-proclaiming epigram is of course multiply meaningful, and one may
find in it also perhaps a clue to the method of Malinowski's ethnographytaking that word now not in the sense of recording ethnographic data in the
field, but in the sense of its subsequent representation in a published monograph (cf. Marcus 1982). Malinowski (whose choice of adjectives can scarcely
have been accidental) was himself acutely conscious of the chasm between
"the brute material of information . . . and the final authoritative presentation
of the results" (1922:3)-or, as he elsewhere equally revealingly phrased it,
105
between "the slight dust of little bits of information-here and there, cha
otic, unequal even in their credibility" and the "final ideals of knowledge":
"the essential nigger [sic] as an illustration and document to our Conception
of Man" (BMPL: "Method" n.d.). The problem was how "to convince my
readers" that the ethnographic information offered them was "objectively
acquired knowledge" and not simply "a subjectively formed notion" (ibid.).
At the level of explicit formulation, Malinowski usually tended to discuss the
issue in terms one might expect of a physicist-turned-ethnographer under the
methodological shadow of Rivers. Just as in "an experimental contribution
to physical or chemical science," the critical thing was to be "absolutely can
did" about one's method (1922:2). But although Malinowski devoted detailed (if not fully revealing) attention to certain aspects of his method, his
consciousness of other aspects is only infrequently and implicitly evident. We
may assume from his epigrammatic proclamation an awareness that the eth
nographer was ultimately a literary artificer. Nevertheless, his explicit models
are all from Science, and we are left to our own literary critical devices to
explicate the method of his artifice (cf. Payne 1981)-and thereby to appreciate fully the manner in which he constituted his authority, which may be
regarded as the prototype for the authority of all of modem ethnography, in
both the senses I have suggested (cf. Clifford 1983).
The most explicit attempt to validate that authority is in the introductory
chapter of Argonauts (1922:1-25). There Malinowski groups the "principles
of method" under three main headings: "proper conditions for ethnographic
work" (6); knowledge of the "principles," "aims," and "results" of modem
"scientific study" (8); and the application of "special methods" of "collecting,
manipulating, and fixing" evidence (6). The latter are also grouped under
three rubrics: "statistic documentation by concrete evidence" of the "rules
and regularities of tribal life" (17, 11); collecting "the imponderabilia of ac
tual life and of typical behavior" in order to put "flesh and blood" on the
"skeleton" of the tribal constitution (20, 17); and the creation of a corpus
inscriptionum of native opinion and utterance to illustrate "typical ways of
thinking and feeling" (23-24). Viewed in terms of specific methodological
canons, Malinowski's introduction offers little Rivers had not proposed in
Notes and Queries. His method is less a matter of disembodied rules, however,
than of total personal style. His apparently more innovative methodological
injunctions-the keeping of an "ethnographic diary," the making of "synop
tic charts," and the preliminary sketching of results-all emphasize the con
structive problem-generating role of the ethnographer. But what is really crit
ical is to place this "active huntsman" in a certain situation. Cut off from
"the company of white men," he will "naturally" seek the society of natives
not his "natural companions," engaging in "natural intercourse" with them
rather than relying on "paid, and often bored, informants." Waking up "every
106
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
morning to a day presenting itself more or less as it does to the native," he

finds that his life "soon adopts quite a natural course very much in harmony
with his surroundings." Corrected for repeated "breaches of etiquette," he has
"to learn how to behave." Taking part "in a way" in village life, he ceases "to
be a disturbing element in the tribal life" (7-8). Loneliness thus becomes
the sine qua non of ethnographic knowledge, the means by which one becomes able in a natural way to observe a culture from the inside, and thereby
"grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, and realize his vision of
his world" (25).
Although Malinowski tried to formulate the "ethnographer's magic" as a
prosaic "application of a number of rules of common sense and well-known
scientific principles" (6), his real problem was not so much to tell his readers
how to accomplish the ultimate divinatory task, as to convince them that it
could be done, and that he had done it. If "empty programme" were to be
translated into "the result of personal experience" (13), then his own experience of the native's experience must become the reader's experience as wella task that scientific analysis yielded up to literary art.
In this context, Malinowski's Frazerian apprenticeship (and perhaps also
those tent-bound bouts of novel reading in the Trobriands) served his ethnography very well indeed. As early as 1917, he confided in Frazer that it
was "through the study of your works that I have come to realize the paramount importance of vividness and colour in descriptions of life" (JGF: BM/
JGF 10/25/17). Throughout his book Frazer's "scene/act ratio" is employed to
place the reader imaginatively within the actual physical setting of the events
Malinowski reconstructs: "When, on a hot day, we enter the deep shadow of
fruit trees and palms, and find ourselves in the midst of the wonderfully
designed and ornamented houses hiding here and there in irregular groups
among the green ... "(1922:35). More important still, perhaps, is a device
one might call the "author/reader equation": "Imagine yourself suddenly set
down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to a native
village while the launch ... which has brought you sails away out of sight
... " (4). Introduced to Malinowski's opening methodological excursus in
this ambiguously autobiographical fashion, we are encouraged not only to
share his ethnographic "tribulations," but-partaking of the authority his
experience legitimated-to come along with him as he follows the Trobrianders on their "perilous and difficult enterprises." As Malinowski's original
title (Kula: A Tale of Native Enterprise and Adventure in Eastern New Guinea
[ACHP: BM/ACH 11125/21)) suggested, his ethnography has essentially a
narrative structure. Begil'ming with the construction of the waga or canoe,
through its launching and departure, we are taken on an ambitious overseas
expedition across the sea arm of Pilolu (with a pause for the account of a
mythical shipwreck), on to the Amphletts, Tewara, and Sanaroa, stopping
107
for magical ceremonies on the beach of Sarubwoyna, to the climactic kula

exchanges in Dobu and the journey home-where we witness a return visit
from the Dobuans, and tie up the loose ends of the "inland Kula" and its
"remaining branches and offshoots." With Malinowski at our side intervening
when necessary to explain particular ethnographic details or to provide more
extended disquisitions on the sociology, mythology, magic, and language of
the Kula, we have followed the Trobrianders through the epic event that
periodically focusses all the energies of their existence. At the end we are
prepared to believe that we have glimpsed their "vision of the world," and
"the reality which [they] breathe and by which [they) live" (517).
This is by no means all that Malinowski's narrative style has accomplished. Characteristically, chapters open with references to a present action
or situation: "the canoe, painted and decorated, stands now ready to be
launched" (146); "our party, sailing from the north, reach first the main island of Gumasila" (267). True, there are occasional contrasts between "nowadays" and "olden days," and several chapters in fact end with speculations
of an historical diffusionist character (289). Characteristically, however,
Malinowski writes in the active voice and present tense, employing what one
critic has called a "syntax of agency" (Payne 1981:427). By bringing the
reader along as eyewitness to the ongoing Kula events, he establishes the
conviction that they exemplify life in the Trobriands to this very day. Previous ethnographies had described reconstructed behavior as if it were present
practice, and subsequent ethnographies (including his own) did not emulate
the event-narrative form of Argonauts. But it was Malinowski's Argonauts that
validated the temporal context in which modern ethnography is normally
situated: the vague and essentially atemporal moment we call "the ethnographic present."
As the homeric (and Frazerian) resonances of its actually published title
suggest, something was going on in this primal ethnographic scene besides
the narrative re-creation of actual experience. At one point in his discussion
of the Trobriand shipwreck myth, Malinowski suggests that it is not always
easy "to make a distinction between what is mere mytho-poetic fiction and
what is ... drawn from actual experience" (1922:236); and despite his professed methodological candor, it is clear that Malinowski himself sometimes
blurred that distinction. It takes an attentive reader to realize from the printed
narrative that he never actually sailed with a Kula expedition after that illfated venture towards Kitava in 1915. At one point he does in fact explicitly
tell us that most of his narrative is "reconstructed," arguing that for one who
has "seen much of the native's tribal life and has a good grip over intelligent
informants," such reconstruction is neither "fanciful" nor "very difficult" (376).
But along the way we have been encouraged by ambiguous phrases ("I have
seen, indeed followed") to believe that he had done something more than
108
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
catch up in a cutter (1967:242). Similarly, while attentive readers may note

that he did sometimes pay informants (1922:409), without the benefit of his
diary one would scarcely guess just how often he retreated to Billy Hancock's
compound at Gusaweta for refuge from "sickness and surfeit of native" (6).
From that same diary we know that his time reckoning was somewhat unreliable-in general, he was not actually in the field for quite so long as Argonauts suggests (cf. 1922:16 and 1967:216).
A certain vagueness as to the situation of events in time is of course one
aspect of the myth-making process. Another is the peopling of the mythopoeic moment with characters of archetypical significance. In this context it
is interesting to consider the cast of characters of Argonauts (cf. Payne 1981).
Most numerous, and manifestly central to the account, are the "natives":
distinguished often by tribal group or status, frequently named, occasionally
subsumed within the category "savage" (and in the privacy of his diary, by
the epithet "nigger"), but most explicitly denied the archetypifying capitalization of Primitive Economic Man-a rubric Malinowski was at some pains
to destroy (1922:60). Brushed at times with the exotic colors of noble savagery, they are more often painted in rather prosaic tones. Although it is
organized around their adventure, and they are on one occasion referred to
as "homeric heroes" (1922:295), they are not in fact the heroes of Malinowski's romance. His attitude toward them is often that of "gentle irony"a literary mode which was to characterize much of modem ethnography (Payne
1981:421; Thornton n.d.). The ethnographer not only is capable of sharing
their vision of their world, but he knows things about it that they will never
know, and brings to light phenomena which "had remained hidden even
from those in whom they happened" (1922:397).
Such phenomena were also hidden from the second group of characters:
"the minor cast of cramped minds" who had "gotten the natives all wrong"
in the past-administrators, missionaries, traders, all "full of the biassed and
pre-judged opinions inevitable in the average practical man" who had "lived
for years in the place . . . and who yet hardly knew one thing about them
really well" (Payne 1981:421). Some of them were clearly archetypifications
of painful experiences Malinowski had with very real people-notably the
Mailu missionary Saville, who had in fact provided him with valuable information, but whose "underhanded dealings" had first provoked his professed
"hatred of missionaries" (1967:31, 42). In the methodological introduction
to Argonauts they all appear briefly as a "stock of strawmen" who by stark
contrast highlight the virtues of Malinowski's method. Even previous eth
nographers of the concrete Riversian sort are by implication chided for their
failure to come down off the verandah.
In contrast to these two sets of characters is a third, who stands apart,
109
rnpitalized, in heroic singularity: the Ethnographer. Appositional equation

to the first person singular leaves no doubt as to his actual identity ( 1922:34),
and the equation is confirmed iconographically in photographs of "the Ethnographer's tent" placed strategically at the beginning and end of the book,
hefore and after the expedition it recounts (16, 481). Marking him off from
all other Europeans, the methodological introduction has affirmed his divinatory powers. At its end we know full well that only he, who ventured there
alone himself and made his loneliness the instrument of divining knowledge,
can now lead us also into the heart of darkness.
Considered in this light, Argonauts is itself a kind of euhemerist__roythdivinizing, however, not its ostensible Trobriand heroes, but the European
Jason who brings back the Golden Fleece of ethnographic knowledge. Long
hefore Susan Sontag used Levi-Strauss as the model of the "Anthropologist
as Hero" ( 1966), Malinowski had created the role for himself. But that his
purpose was not simply self-serving is evident in unpublished notes toward
his introduction, in which he was concerned not only with the problem of
auctorial authority (how to "convince my readers"), but also with the situation of the ethnographic beginner, who enters the field "paralyzed with fear
of all sorts of traps and barriers" (BMPL: "Method" n.d. ). In this context, it
seems clear that the introduction to Argonauts was never intended really to
he a true description of Malinowski's fieldwork experience. Description was
only the device by which he made prescription compelling. Even if the selfadvancing striving of his vigorous ego had allowed, it would not have served
his confidence-inspiring prescriptive purposes to dwell here upon his own
frustrations and failures (cf. the relatively innocuous "Confessions of Ignorance and Failure" (1935, 1:452-82)). He }\'anted to make the apprentice
ethnographer "aware beforehand that we had a method of attacking" all those
"initial difficulties which are so very hard to surmount" ("Method," n.d.).
More than that, he wanted to legitimate the style of fieldwork upon which
that novice was to embark. For novice ethnographers as much as general
readers, the problem was not so much to enumerate principles of method,
but to convince that the task could be done. In this context, every aspect of
Argonauts-structure as well as argument, style as well as content, anecdote
as well as precept, implication as well as statement, omission as well as inclusion-all contributed to the euhemerist validating myth.
Several years later, in writing on the role of "Myth in Primitive Psychology," Malinowski emphasized the intermingling of its pragmatic and legiti
mating functions: myth was at once "a warrant, a charter, and often even a
practical guide to the activities with which it is connected" (l 926a: 108). It
was "not an explanation in satisfaction of a scientific interest, but a narrative
resurrection of a primeval reality, told in satisfaction of deep religious wants,
110
GEORGE
w STOCKING, JR.
moral cravings, social submissions, assertions, even practical requirements"

(101). Expressing, enhancing, and codifying belief, vouching for "the efficiency of ritual," it came "into play when rite, ceremony, or a social or moral
rule demands justification, warrant of antiquity, reality, and sanctity" (107).
Malinowski had spoken explicitly in his diary of "the revolution" he wanted
to "effect in social anthropology" (1967:289), and it is hard to read his later
essay, with its final spirited plea for an "open-air anthropology" (I 926a: 14 7),
without feeling that he had sought more or less consciously in Argonauts to
provide a mythic charter for its central ritual.
MALINOWSKI'S MYTHIC CHARTER AND

MODERN ETHNOGRAPHY
Whether or not he went about it in consciously mythopoeic fashion, Malinowski succeeded in validating the authority of his method to both readers
and apprentice ethnographers alike. The world's premier reader of ethnographies, Sir James G. Frazer, gave the work his imprimatur: living "as a native
among the natives for many months," Malinowski had portrayed them "in
the round and not in the flat" -not like Moliere's "dummies dressed up to
look very like human beings," but like the "solid" characters of Cervantes
and Shakespeare, "drawn not from one side only but from many" (BM 1922:vii,
ix). Seligman, whose ethnographic taste was as prosaic as his fieldwork style
(Firth 197 5), was less impressed. Despite the fact that Argonauts was dedicated to him, he continued to regard Baloma as Malinowski's best work, tending to view his later writings as compromised by popularizing purpose (BMPL:
CGS/BM 8/5/31). With Rivers recently dead, it was Haddon who spoke in
public for the Cambridge School, lauding the book as "the high-water mark
of ethnological investigation and interpretation," which would "prove of great
value for the guidance offuture fieldworkers" (ACH 1922).
That it served as such reflects the fact that no other early published work
of the prewar cohort paid such explicit and extended attention to ethnographic (as opposed to interpretive) method (cf. Radcliffe-Brown 1922). Their
initial ethnographic reports were drably institutional monographic publications (Hocart 1922; Karsten 1923; Landtman 1917) whose manifest level of
methodological self-consciousness in one case lent itself to Marett's revealing
prefatory comment: "Touring, indeed, proves the ideal method of anthropological research" (Jenness & Ballantyne 1920: 7). In this context, the first
chapter of Argonauts (published, with Haddon's assistance, by a leading commercial publisher [ACHP: BM/ACH 12/20/21)) was the single most acces-
111
sible statement of the "modem sociological method of fieldwork"-especially

for non-anthropologists, who would be unlikely to read Rivers' chapters in
Notes and Queries. Effectively appropriating to himself experience that had
in fact been shared by others (including "The Ethnographer's Tent," which
Westermarck, for instance, had taken to Morocco (1927:158]), at once archetypifying it and rendering it in concrete narrative form, Malinowski validated not only his own fieldwork but that of "modem anthropology" (cf.
Panoff 1972:54). A man of great ambition and no mean entrepreneurial talent, he was able to make himself the spokesman of a methodological revolution, both within anthropology, and in some ways more important, to the
non-anthropological academic and intellectual community.
By 1926, when he was the "star" of the Hanover Conference of the
!American] Social Science Research Council, Malinowski had won over a
critically important sector of that community: the "philanthropoids" of the
Rockefeller Foundation. In the late 1920s he served as their chief informal
anthropological advisor, much to the dismay of Grafton Elliot Smith, who
could not understand why "the sole method of studying mankind is to sit on
a Melanesian island for a couple of years and listen to the gossip of the villagers" (RFA: GES/Herrick 2/13/27). For a time, the seminars of Elliot Smith's
diffusionist protege William Perry at University College rivaled Malinowski's
in attracting students to anthropology. But reinforced by the requirement
that the Rockefeller-funded fieldworkers of the International African Institute should spend a year in his seminar, Malinowski's methodological charisma soon won out (GS 1979b). Most of those who were to claim the status
of social anthropologist in the British sphere served an apprenticeship with
Malinowski; and while a number of them were later to tum away from him
to find their theoretical inspiration in Radcliffe-Brown, they continued to
regard Malinowski as the archetypical fieldworker (Gluckman 1963, 1967).
Even in America, which had its own variant of the mythic fieldwork charter,
Malinowski's influence was asserted, both from a distance and in person on
periodic visits from 1926 on. Despite the fact that the railroad and the Model
T facilitated a more transient fieldwork, young ethnographers seem to have
measured themselves against a Malinowskian model. Thus Sol Tax, emulat
ing Malinowski's "ideal method of ethnography" (and having no knowledge
of those "cook boys" mentioned only in the diary), started out his work among
the Fox in the summer of 1932 by living "in a camp of my own in the midst
of native camps," only to discover that the Indians felt him silly to "stay out
there and cook for myself like a squaw when I could get to town in five
minutes" (Blanchard 1979:423 ).
That the central mythic symbol of the tent could have such potency from
afar suggests some final observations. Malinowski seems to have devoted more
112
GEORGE
w. STOCKING, JR.
attention in his seminars to discussing details of fieldwork method than is

often now the case, and the correspondence of his students from the field
indicates that those synoptic charts were taken very seriously (Richards 1957:25;
cf. BMPL: AR/BM 7/8/30). But the fieldwork style he validated was less a
matter of concrete prescription than of placing oneself in a situation where
one might have a certain type of experience. Like the situations that elicited
Trobriand magic, it was one that was initially threatening and could be clan
gerous, and in which "the elements of chance and accident" often deter
mined success or failure. As Malinowski (echoing Marett) had suggested in
"Myth in Primitive Psychology," the function of magic consisted in "the bridging
over of gaps and inadequacies in highly important activities not yet com
pletely mastered by man" (1926a:139-40). The gap between the specific
methodological prescriptions of fieldwork and the vaguely defined goals of
ethnographic knowledge had thus to be filled by what Malinowski himself
had called "the ethnographer's magic" (1922:6). And just as in primitive
psychology myth functioned "especially where there is a sociological strain"
(1926a:126), in anthropological psychology it functioned especially where
there was an epistemological strain.
Despite his breezy public confidence that all would be well once anthro
pologists stepped outside the "closed study of the theorist" and came down
from "the verandah of the missionary compound" into the "open air of the
anthropological field" (1926a:99, 146-47), it is clear that at times Malinowski felt that strain, and we may assume that so also did those who fol
lowed in his footsteps. In retrospect, however, one is struck with the relative
dearth of discussion of the fundamental assumptions of fieldwork method (cf.
Nash & Wintrob 1972). It is tempting to suggest that Malinowski's ethno
graphic bravura made it seem unnecessary. Even those whose own research
did not live up to (or even model itself upon) his prescriptions were never
theless sustained by his preemptive archetypification. Thus it was that the
problem of instant linguistic competence has rarely been raised either as a
general issue (cf. Lowie 1940) or in regard to particular ethnographic monographs-despite the fact that few apprentice ethnographers may be presumed
to share Malinowski's remarkable linguistic facility. For almost four decades
Malinowski's mythic charter functioned to sustain the ethnographic enter
prise, helping several generations of aspiring ethnographers to "get on with
the work." By the time his diaries were published, however, changing colonial circumstances had fundamentally altered the ethnographer's situation;
and in the context of a protracted epistemological malaise (heightened no
doubt by their publication), it has seemed necessary to many anthropologists
to examine more systematically all that was so casually subsumed by that
deceptively innocent charm phrase: "the ethnographer's magic" (e.g., Rabinow 1977).
113
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research for this paper was at various points supported by the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Marian and Adolph Lichtstem Foundation for Anthropology (of the Department of Anthropology,
University of Chicago), the National Endowment for the Humanities, the
National Science Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Preliminary versions were given at the meeting of
the History of Science Society in Los Angeles, December 1981, and at the
March 1982 meeting of the Chicago Group in the History of the Social
Sciences (sponsored by the Morris Fishbein Center for the Study of the History of Science and Medicine). I am particularly indebted to James Clifford,
Raymond Fogelson, Dell Hymes, David Schneider, Mark Schwehn, and Bruce
Trigger for helpful comments. I would like to thank Mrs. Helena Wayne for
her kind permission to reproduce the picture of her father, Bronislaw Malinowski, and David W. Phillipson, Curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, for permission to reproduce that
of C. G. Seligman. I would also like to express my appreciation to the officers
and staffs of the various manuscript archives in which I worked.
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MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
In writing chis paper I have drawn on research materials collected since 1969 from
various archival sources, which are cited by the following abbreviations:
ACHP
AMHP
BMPL
BMPY
EBTP
FOP
JGFP
RFA
WBSP
WHRP
A. C. Haddon Papers, University Library, Cambridge, England.

A. M. Hocart Papers, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zea
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Bronislaw Malinowski Papers, British Library of Political and Economic
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Bronislaw Malinowski Papers, Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.
E. B. Tylor Papers, Library of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.
Francis Galton Papers, University College, London.
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Cambridge, England.
POWER AND DIALOGUE IN

ETHNOGRAPHY
Marcel Griaule's Initiation
JAMES CLIFFORD
In fact, the sociologist and his "object" farm a couple where each one is to be
interpreted through the other, and where the relationship must itself be deciphered as a historical moment.
-Sartre: Critique de la raison dialectique
Marcel Griaule cut a figure, self-confident and theatrical. He began his career
as an aviator in the years just after World War I. (Later, in 1946, as holder
of the first chair in ethnology at the Sorbonne, he would lecture in his airforce officer's uniform.) An energetic promoter of fieldwork, he portrayed it
as the continuation-by scientific means-of a great tradition of adventure
and exploration (1948c:l 19). In 1928, encouraged by Marcel Mauss and the
linguist Marcel Cohen, Griaule spent a year in Ethiopia. He returned, avid
for a new expedition, and his plans bore fruit two years later in the muchpublicized Mission Dakar-Djibouti, which for twenty-one months traversed
Africa from the Atlantic to the Red Sea along the lower rim of the Sahara.
Largely a museum-collecting enterprise, the mission also undertook extended
ethnographic sojourns in the French Sudan (Mali}, where Griaule first made
contact with the Dagon of Sanga, and in Ethiopia (the region of Gondar},
where the expedition spent five months. The mission's nine members (some
James Clifford is Associate Professor in the History of Consciousness Program, University of California, Santa Cruz. His research has centered on the recent history of
anthropology in France, and he is the author of Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt
in the Melanesian World. Currently he is working on a study of ethnography and lit
crature in the twentieth century, focussing on problems of authority and textuality.
121
122
JAMES CLIFFORD
coming and going en route} included also Andre Schaeffner, Deborah Lif
chitz, and Michel Leiris, each of whom would make significant ethnographic
contributions.
Thanks largely to the publicity sense of Georges-Henri Riviere-a well
connected jazz amateur engaged by Paul Rivet to reorganize the Trocadero
Ethnographic Museum-the Mission Dakar-Djibouti was patronized by Paris
high society. The Chamber of Deputies voted a special law, and Griaule and
Riviere skillfully exploited the postwar vogue for things African in soliciting
funds and personnel. The undertaking partook also of a certain technological
bravado reminiscent of the period's famous expeditions, financed by Citroen,
La Croisiere Jaune, and La Croisiere Noire-each a tour de force of mobility
crossing whole continents by automobile. Griaule, an early enthusiast for the
airplane, would be fascinated throughout his career by technological aids to
ethnography: conventional and aerial photography, sound recording devices,
and even the project of a research-boat-cum-laboratory for use on the Niger.
The mission's "booty," in Riviere and Rivet's term (1933:5}, included among
its many photos, recordings, and documents, 3,500 objects destined for the
Trocadero Museum, soon to become the Musee de !'Homme. The idea was
only just winning acceptance in England and America, with Rockefeller funding
of the International African Institute, that intensive field studies were in
themselves enough to justify major subventions. Thus collecting was a finan
cial necessity, and the mission brought back whatever authentic objects it
could decently-and occasionally surreptitiously-acquire. The postwar pas
sion for l'art negre fostered a cult of the exotic artifact, and the carved figures
and masks of West and Equatorial Africa satisfied perfectly a European fetish
ism nourished on cubist and surrealist aesthetics (Clifford 1981; Jamin 1982).
From 1935 to 1939, Griaule organized group expeditions to the French
Sudan, Cameroon, and T chad, in which museum-collecting played a lesser
role. In annual or biannual visits to West Africa focussing increasingly on
the Dogon, he worked out a distinctive ethnographic "method" that is the
subject of the present essay. For Griaule the collection of artifacts was part of
the intensive documentation of a unified culture area, a region centered on
the bend of the Niger, and particularly on the Bambara and Dogan-with
whom he spent about three years over ten expeditions (Lettens 1971:504).
Griaule's descriptions were cartographic and archeological as well as ethnographic; he was concerned with variations in cultural traits, the history of
migrations, and the overlay of civilizations in West Africa. But increasingly
his interests focussed on synchronic cultural patterns. Over time he estab
lished, to his own satisfaction, the existence of a ramified but coherent culture area he later portrayed as one of three major divisions of sub-Saharan
Africa: the Western Sudan, Bantu Africa, and an intermediate zone in Cam
eroon and T chad. Each region was characterized by a traditional sophie or
PowER AND DIALOGUE: MARCEL GRIAULE
123
.~cience-a
mode of knowledge inscribed in language, habitat, oral tradition,

myth, technology, and aesthetics. Griaule discerned common principles underlying the three African epistemological fields, and this permitted him to
use the Dogon and their neighbors as privileged examples of l'homme noirmicrocosms of "African" thought, civilization, philosophy, and religion. A
characteristic movement from parts to wholes, to more inclusive wholes, was
Griaule's basic mode of ethnographic representation. It mirrored, and found
confirmation in, Dogon styles of thought, with their encompassing symbolic
correspondences of microcosm and macrocosm, of body and cosmos, of everyday
details and the patterns of myth.
A number of different approaches are subsumed under the general label of
the "Griaule School." 1 The total project spans five decades, falling roughly
into two phases: before and after Ogotemmeli. In 194 7, in a now legendary
series of interviews, the Dogon sage, Ogotemmeli, apparently acting on instructions from tribal elders, instructed Griaule in the deep wisdom of his
people (Griaule 1948a). The first decade of research at Sanga had been exhaustively documentary in character; now with access to the knowledge revealed by Ogotemmeli and other qualified informants, the task became exegetical. Ogotemmeli's elaborate knowledge-reinforced and extended by other
sources-appeared to provide a potent "key" to Dogon culture (Griaule
1952c:548). Seen as a kind of lived mythology, it provided a framework for
grasping the Dogan world as an integrated whole. This immanent structurea "metaphysic" as Griaule liked to call it-offered a purely indigenous organization of the complex total social facts of Dogan life.
Full compilations of this sagesse, an enormously detailed system of symbolic and narrative correspondences, appeared only after much further research and cross-checking, which continued after Griaule's death in 1956.
The masterpieces of the Griaule School's second period are Le Renard pale,
co-authored with his closest collaborator Germaine Dieterlen (1965), and
Ethnologie et langage: La parole chez les Dogan by his daughter, the distinguished ethnolinguist Genevieve Calame-Griaule (1965). In these works one
hears, as it were, two full chords of a Dogan symphony: a mythic explanation
of the cosmos, a native theory of language and expressivity. More than just
native explanations or theories, these superb compendia present themselves
1. There are many personal variants, and one should distinguish the following standpoints.
The "core" of the ongoing research on the Dagon and Bambara is that of Griaule, Dieterlen,
and De Ganay. Calame-Griaule and Dominique Zahen contribute directly to the project, but
from distinct methodological standpoints. Lebeuf, an early co-worker, shares Griaule's general
viewpoint, but his work is concentrated in T chad. Rouch, de Heusch, and various later students
remain ambivalently loyal to the "tradition." Paulme, Leiris, and Schaeffner, early contributors
to the Dagon project, have always maintained a skeptical distance from the undertaking, and
should not be included in the "school."
124
]AMES CLIFFORD
as coherent arts of life, socio-mythic landscapes of physiology and personal

ity, symbolic networks incarnate in an infinity of daily details.
The work of Griaule and his followers is one of the classic achievements
of twentieth-century ethnography. Within certain areas of emphasis its depth
of comprehension and completeness of detail are unparalleled. But given its
rather unusual focus, the extreme nature of some of its claims, and the cru
cial, problematic role of the Dogon themselves as active agents in the long
ethnographic process, Griaule's work has been subjected to sharp criticism
from a variety of standpoints. Some have noted its idealistic bias and its lack
of historical dynamism (Balandier 1960; Sarevskaja 1964). British social an
thropologists have raised skeptical questions about Griaule's fieldwork, no
tably his lifelong reliance on translators and on a few privileged informants
attuned to his interests (whose initiatory knowledge might not be readily
generalizable to the rest of society). Followers of Malinowski or Evans-Pritchard
have missed in Griaule's work any sustained attention to daily existence or
politics as actually lived, and in general they are wary of a too perfectly
ordered vision of Dogon reality (Richards 1967; Douglas 1967; Goody 1967).
Rereading the Dogon corpus closely, other critics have begun, on the basis
of internal contradictions, to unravel the equilibrium of Dogon mythology
and to question the processes by which an "absolute subject" (here a unified
construct called "the Dogon") is constituted in ethnographic interpretation
(Lettens 1971; Michel-Jones 1978). In the wake of colonialism, Griaule has
been taken to task for his consistent preference for an African past over a
modernizing present. Africans have criticized him for essentializing traditional cultural patterns and repressing the role of individual invention in the
elaboration of Dogon myth (Hountondji 1976). After 1950 Griaule's work
resonated strongly with the Negritude Movement, particularly with Senghor's evocation of an African essence. But as Senghor's brand of negritude
has yielded to Cesaire's-a more syncretic, impure, inventive conception of
cultural identity-Griaule's African metaphysic begins to seem an ahistorical, idealized alter-ego to a totalizing Occidental humanism.
It is impossible here to evaluate many of the specific criticisms levelled at
Griaule, especially in the absence of detailed restudy of the Dogon. A few
methodological warnings are necessary, however, when approaching such a
contested oeuvre. The historian of fieldwork is hampered by limited and fore
shortened evidence; it is always difficult, if not impossible, to know what
happened in an ethnographic encounter. (This is at least partly responsible
for the fact that the history of anthropology has tended to be a history of
theory, even though the modem discipline has defined itself by reference to
its distinct "method.") Usually, as in Griaule's case, one must rely heavily on
the ethnographer's own ex post facto narrations, accounts which serve to
confirm his authority. One can also draw on his methodological prescrip-
POWER AND DIALOGUE: MARCEL GRIAULE
125
tions, and those of collaborators; but these also tend to be overly systematic
rationalizations composed after the fact. A scattering of relevant journals and
memoirs can help somewhat (Leiris 1934; Rouch 1978b; Paulme 1977), as
can a critical reading of published ethnographies and fieldnotes-where
available (and comprehensible). 2 But direct evidence of the interpersonal
dynamics and politics of research is largely absent. Moreover, there is an
enormous gap in all histories of fieldwork: the indigenous "side" of the story.
How was the research process understood and influenced by informants, by
tribal authorities, by those who did and did not cooperate? (cf. Lewis 1973).
Griaule's story has the merit of making this part of the encounter inescapable.
But our knowledge of Dagon influences on the ethnographic process remains
fragmentary.
It is simplistic to tax Griaule with projecting onto the Dagon a subjective
vision, with developing a research method for eliciting essentially what he
was looking for (Lettens 1971:397, passim). And even the more credible
claim that Griaule overstressed certain parts of Dagon reality at the expense
of others assumes the existence of a natural entity called Dagon culture apart
from its ethnographic inventions. Even if it is true that key informants became "Griaulized," that Griaule himself was "Dogonized," that Ogotemmeli's
wisdom was that of an individual "theologian" and the "secret," initiatory
nature of the revealed knowledge was systematically exaggerated; even if other
priorities and methods would certainly have produced a different ethnography, it does not follow that Griaule's version of the Dagon is false. His writings, and those of his associates, express a Dagon truth, a complex, negotiated, historically contingent truth specific to certain relations of textual
production. The historian asks what kind of truth Griaule and the Dagon he
worked with produced, in what dialogical conditions, within what political
limits, in what historical climate.
Masterpieces like Le Renard pdle and Ethnologie et langage are elaborate
inventions authored by a variety of subjects-European and African. These
compendia do not represent the way "the Dogan" think: both their enormous
complexity and the absence of female informants cast doubt on any such
totalizing claim. Nor is their "deep" knowledge an interpretive key to Dagon
reality for anyone beyond the ethnographer and a small number of native
2. Anyone who has tied to reinterpret fieldnotes will know it is a problematic enterprise.
They may be gnomic, shorthand, heteroglot notes to oneself, or the sorts of "fieldnotes" often
quoted in published ethnographies--formulated summaries of events, observations, conversations, etc., recomposed after the fact. It is well-nigh impossible to disentangle the interpretive
processes at work as fieldnotes move from one level of textualization to the next. Griaule's 173
richly detailed "fiches de terrain" for the crucial interviews with Ogotemmeli (Griaule 1946) are
clearly the product of at least one rewriting, eliminating specific linguistic problems, the pres
ence of the translator Kogem, etc.
126
]AMES CLIFFORD
"intellectuals." But to say that these Dagon truths are specific inventions
(rather than parts or distortions of "Dogan culture"} is to take them seriously
as textual constructions, avoiding both celebration and polemic.
The Griaule tradition offers one of the few fully elaborated alternatives to
the Anglo-American model of intensive participant-observation. For this reason
alone it is important for the history of twentieth-century ethnography-particularly with the recent rediscovery in America of "long-term field research"
(Foster et al. 1979). Griaule's writings are also important (and here we must
separate the man from his "school") for their unusual directness in portraying
research as inherently agonistic, theatrical, and fraught with power. His work
belongs, manifestly, to the colonial period. And thanks to Griaule's dramatic
flair and fondness for overstatement, we can perceive clearly certain key assumptions, roles, and systems of metaphors that empowered ethnography during
the thirties and forties.
MANUEL D'ETHNOGRAPHIE
One cannot speak of a French "tradition" of fieldwork, as one refers (perhaps
too easily} to British or American schools. Nonetheless, if only by contrast,
Griaule's ethnography does appear to be peculiarly French. We can suggest
this rather elusive quality by evoking briefly two influential precursors. In
Paris the most important advocates of fieldwork during the 1920s were Marcel Mauss and Maurice Delafosse-who collaborated with Levy-Bruh! and
Rivet to found the lnstitut d'Ethnologie. Here, after 1925, a generation of
"Africanist" ethnographers was trained.
In the first three decades of the century Black Africa was coming into
focus, separated from the "oriental" Maghreb. By 1931, when the Journal de
la Societe des Africanistes was founded, it had become possible to speak of a
field called "Africanism" (modeled on the older synthetic discipline of Orientalism). The fashionable vogue for L'art negre and black music contributed
to the formation of a cultural object, a civilisation about which synthetic statements could be made. Delafosse's Les Noirs de l'Afrique and L'Ame noir contributed to this development along with the translated writings of Frobenius.
Griaule's work unfolded within the Africanist paradigm, moving associatively
from specific studies of particular populations to generalizations about l'homme
noire, African civilization, and metaphysics (Griaule 1951, 1953 ).
At the lnstitut d'Ethnologie a regular stream of colonial officers studied
ethnographic method as part of their training at the Ecole Coloniale, where
Delafosse was a popular teacher before his death in 1926. As a veteran of
127
Marcel Griaule developing photographic plates, Sanga, October-November 1931. Courtesy

Mission Dakar-Djibouti, Musee de ('Homme, Paris.
extended duty in West Africa, Delafosse knew African languages and cultures
intimately. When his health was undermined by the rigors of constant travel
and research, he retired to France, becoming the first professor of Black African languages at the Ecole des Langues Orientales. A scholar of great erudition, he made contributions to African history, ethnography, geography,
and linguistics. At the Ecole Coloniale, where Africans had long been considered childlike inferiors, he taught the fundamental equality (though not
the similarity) of races. Different milieux produce different civilizations. If
Africans are technically and materially backward this is a historical accident;
their art, their moral life, their religions, are nonetheless fully developed and
worthy of esteem. He urged his students toward ethnography and the mastery
of indigenous languages. His authority was concrete experience, his persona
that of the broussard-man of the back-country, tough-minded, iconoclastic,
128
}AMES CLIFFORD
humane, impatient with hierarchy and the artifices of polite society (Delafosse 1909; cf. Deschamps 1975:97). For a generation of young, liberally
inclined colonial officers he represented an authentic, concrete way to "know"
Africa and to communicate its fascination.
After Delafosse's death the principal influence on the first generation of
professional fieldworkers in France was exerted by another charismatic teacher,
Marcel Mauss. Though he never undertook fieldwork, Mauss consistently
deplored France's backwardness in this domain (Mauss 1913). At the lnstitut
d'Ethnologie he taught a yearly course (Ethfwgraphie descriptive) specifically
geared to fieldwork methods. Mauss was anything but an abstract, bookish
scholar; anyone who looks at his "Techniques du Corps" ( 1934) can see for
themselves an acute power of observation, an interest in the concrete and
the experiential (cf. Condominas 1972). Mauss urged all his students toward
ethnography; between 1925 and 1940 the lnstitut sponsored more than a
hundred field trips (Karady 1981:176). Unlike Rivers, Malinowski, and later
Griaule, whose teaching reflected their own experiences in the field, he did
not propound a distinct research "method." But if he lacked intimate experience, he did not feel compelled to rationalize or justify his own practice.
Versed in the fieldwork traditions of various nations, his course was an inventory, classification, and critique of possible methods. Mauss provided a sense
of the complexity of "total social facts" (Mauss 1924:274), and the different
means by which descriptions, recordings, textual accounts, and collections
of artifacts could be constituted. His wide-ranging Manuel d'ethnographie (1947),
a compilation of course notes brought together by Denise Paulme shortly
before his death, makes it clear that the idea of a privileged approach was
quite foreign to him.
Mauss strongly supported the general trend of modem academic fieldwork,
urging "the professional ethnographer" to adopt "the intensive method"
(1947:13). Serious comparative work depended on the completion of full
local descriptions. But although the Manuel's recommendations reflect a close
knowledge of American and British techniques, there is no emphasis on individual participant-observation. Mauss endorses team research; overall, his
approach is documentary rather than experiential and hermeneutic.
This documentary concern would be reflected in the introduction of Griaule's
first major field monograph: "This work presents documents relative to the
Masks of the Dogon, collected during research trips among the cliffs of Bandiagara. . . ." (Griaule 1938:vii). It is hard to imagine an account in the
Malinowskian tradition beginning in this way. Although Griaule does considerably more in Masques Dogons than simply display collected documents,
the metaphor reveals a particular empirical style (cf. Leenhardt 1932; Clifford 1982a:I38-141). For Mauss, who accepted an older division of labor
between the man in the field and the theorist at home, description should
POWER AND DIAWGUE: MARCEL GRIAULE
129
never be governed by explanatory concerns (Mauss 1947:389). To provide

the kind of information useful to a comparative sociology, the ethnographer
should avoid building too much implicit explanation into ethnographic data
in the process of its constitution. Mauss gave no special status to the idea
that a synthetic portrait of a culture (something, for him, massively overdetermined) could be produced through the research experience of an individual subject, or built around the analysis of a typical or central institution.
His limiting notion of "total social facts" led him rather to recommend the
deployment of multiple documentary methods by a variety of specialized observers. Working at a higher level of abstraction, the sociologist could perhaps "glimpse, measure, and hold in equilibrium" (1924:279) the different
strata of "total" facts-technological, aesthetic, geographical, demographic,
economic, juridical, linguistic, religious, historical, and intercultural. But
the ethnographer's task, whether alone or in a research team, was to amass
as complete a corpus as possible: texts, artifacts, maps, photographs, and so
forth-"documents" precisely localized and covering a broad range of cultural
phenomena. Fieldworkers should construct "series and not panoplies" (21).
Mauss used old terms precisely: a panoply is a complete complement of arms,
a suit of armor with all its accoutrements. The term suggests a functional
integration of parts deployed and displayed around a coherent, effective body.
Mauss did not see society or culture this way. One should be wary of reducing
his concept of total social facts (reminiscent of Freud's "overdetermination")
to a functionalist notion of the interrelation of parts.
Mauss' elusive concept nevertheless articulated a fundamental predicament for twentieth-century ethnographers. If every "fact" is susceptible to
multiple encoding, making sense in diverse contexts and implicating in its
comprehension the "total" ensemble of relations that constitutes the society
under study, then this assumption can serve as encouragement to grasp the
ensemble by focussing on one of its parts. Indeed, this is what fieldworkers
have always done, building up social wholes ("cultures" in the American
tradition) through a concentration on significant elements. Many different
approaches have emerged: the focus on key "institutions" (Malinowski's Trobriand Kula, Evans-Pritchard's Azande witchcraft); the bringing to the foreground of "totalizing cultural performances" (Spencer and Gillen's Arunta
initiation, Bateson's latmul Naven, Geertz's Balinese cockfight); the identification of privileged armatures to which the whole of culture could be related (Rivers' "genealogical method" and Radcliffe-Brown's "social struc.i
ture"); or even Griaule's late conception of initiatory knowledge as the key
to a unified representation of West African cultures. In different ways the
new generation of academic fieldworkers were all looking for what Griaule
would recommend, defending his practice of teamwork in the field-a "rapid,
sure method" ahle to grasp synthetically an overdetermined cultural reality
130
]AMES CLIFFORD
(1933:8). Thus Mauss' belief that the totality of society is implicit in its parts
or organizing structures may appear as a kind of enabling charter for a broad
range of fieldwork tactics (approaches to social representation in the rhetorical mode of synecdoche), without which, relatively short-term professional
fieldwork would be questionable-particularly research aiming at portrayals
of whole cultures. Since one cannot study everything at once, one must be
able to highlight parts or attack specific problems in the confidence that they
evoke a wider context.
But there is another side to total social facts: the idea is ambiguous, and
finally troubling. If it legitimates partial cultural descriptions, it offers no
guidance as to which code, key, or luminous example is to be preferred. Like
Nietzsche's vision of infinite interpretations, Mauss' idea sees social reality
and the moral world as constructed in many possible ways, none of which
may be privileged. Modem ethnography took shape in a shattered world
haunted by nihilism, and Mauss' own portrayals of the constitution of collective order were acutely aware of the possibility of disorder. The Gift is an
allegory of reconciliation and reciprocity in the wake of the First World War.
As is well known, the war had a devastating impact on Mauss; its sequel in
1940 would deprive him of the will to work and think. With the breakdown
of evolutionist master-narratives, the relativist science of culture worked to
rethink the world as a dispersed whole, composed of distinct, functioning,
and interrelated cultures. It reconstituted social and moral wholeness, plurally. If synecdochic ethnography argued, in effect, that "cultures" hold together, it did so in response to a pervasive modem feeling, linking the Irishman Yeats to the Nigerian Achebe, that "things fall apart."
For a committed socialist like Mauss, the study of society was a refusal of
nihilism; its constructions of social wholeness served moral and political as
well as scientific ends. But he was too clear-sighted and knowledgeable to
espouse any sovereign method for the constitution of totalities. He contented
himself with a kind of gay science-generous, rather than, like Nietzsche,
sardonic. He presented a generation of ethnographers with an astonishing
repertoire of objects for study and ways to put the world together: ethnography was a dipping of different nets in the teeming ocean, each catching its
own sort of fish. Schooled in Cushing's work, he knew that the task of representing a culture was potentially endless. "You say you have spent two and
a half years with one tribe," he remarked to Meyer Fortes, "poor man, it will
take you twenty years to write it up" (Fortes 1973:284).
Mauss' Manuel was not a methode, but an enormous checklist; thus one
cannot speak of a "Maussian," as one can of a "Malinowskian" or a "Boasian,"
ethnography. (This fact may explain, in part, why French fieldwork has never
assumed a distinct identity and has, in effect, been invisible to anthropolo-
131
gists of other traditions.) His students diverged markedly. Alfred Metraux

pursued a distinguished career of American-style participant-observation.
Michel Leiris, while making original contributions to Dagon and Ethiopian
ethnography, never stopped questioning the subjective conflicts and political
constraints of cross-cultural study as such. Maurice Leenhardt, whose late
entry into the Paris University was much encouraged by Mauss, represented
an older style of research whose authority was rooted in years of missionary
work rather than in academic training. Charles LeCoeur, who attended Malinowski's seminar at the London School of Economics, lived among the Teda,
learned their language, and formally, at least, conducted fieldwork d l'Anglais.
Of Mauss' other students-virtually every major French ethnographer before
1950-only Griaule developed a systematic method and a distinct tradition
of research.
DOCUMENTARY VICISSITUDES
Two loose metaphoric structures govern Griaule's conception of fieldwork: a
documentary system {governed by images of collection, observation, and interrogation) and an initiatory complex (where dialogical processes of educa- i
tion and exegesis come to the fore). Griaule himself presented the two approaches as complementary, each requiring and building on the other. But
one can discern a shift from the documentary to the initiatory as his career
progressed and as his personal involvement with Dogon modes of thought
and belief deepened. For the sake of analytic clarity, we consider them separately. It should be understood, however, that both are attempts to account
for a complicated, evolving ethnographic experience-an experience traversed by influences, historical and intersubjective, beyond the control of
Griaule's metaphors.
The notion that ethnography was a process of collection dominated the
Mission Dakar-Djibouti, with its museographical emphasis. The ethnographic object-be it a tool, statue, or mask-was understood to be a peculiarly reliable "witness" to the truth of an alien society. The Maussian rationale is evident in a set of "Instructions for Collectors" distributed by the
mission.
Because of the need that has always driven men to imprint the traces of their
activity on matter, nearly all phenomena of collective life are capable of
expression in given objects. A collection of objects systematically gathered is
thus a rich gathering of admissable evidence (pieces a conviction]. Their collection creates archives more revealing and sure than written archives, since these
132
}AMES CLIFFORD
are authentic, autonomous objects which cannot have been fabricated for the
needs of the case [les besoins de la cause], and which thus characterize types of
civilizations better than anything else.
(Mauss 1931:6-7)
"Dead," decontextualized objects, the brochure went on to argue, can be

restored to "life" by a surrounding "documentation" (descriptions, drawings,
photos). The links tying any object or institution to the "ensemble of society" can thus be reconstituted and the truth of the whole elicited scientifically from any one of its parts.
Tile recurring juridical metaphors (pieces a conviction, besoins de la cause)
are revealing; if all the parts of a culture can in principle be made to yield
the whole, what justifies an ethnographer's particular selection of revealing
"evidence"? Some "witnesses" must be more reliable than others. A corollary
of the value placed on objects as "authentic and autonomous," not "fabricated for the needs of the case," is the assumption that other forms of evidence, the "archives" composed on the basis of personal observation, description, and interpretation, are less pure, more infected with the contingent
ethnographic encounter, its clash of interests and partial truths. For Griaule,
fieldwork was a perpetual struggle for control (in the political and scientific
senses) of this encounter.
Griaule assumed that the opposing interests of ethnographer and native
could never be entirely harmonized. Relations sometimes romanticized by
the term "rapport" were really negotiated settlements, outcomes of a contin
uous push and pull determining what could and could not be known of the
society under study. The outsider was always in danger of losing the initiative, of acquiescing in a superficial modus vivendi. What was systematically
hidden in a culture could not be learned simply by becoming a temporary
member of a common moral community. It could only be revealed by a kind
of violence: the ethnographer must keep up the pressure (Griaule 1957:14).
Griaule may have had no choice: in Sudanese societies, with their long processes of initiation, one had either to force the revelation of occult traditions
or to be on the scene for decades.
Of all the possible avenues to hidden truths, the least reliable was speechwhat informants actually said in response to questions. This was due not
merely to conscious lying and resistance to inquiry; it followed from dramatistic assumptions that were a leitmotif of his work. For Griaule, every informant's self-presentation (along with that of the ethnographer) was a drama; tization, a putting forward of certain truths and a holding back of others. In
penetrating these conscious or unconscious disguises, the fieldworker had to
exploit whatever advantages, whatever sources of power, whatever knowledge not based on interlocution he or she could acquire (Griaule 1957:92).
133
Marcel Griaule photographing from cliff-top near Sanga, October-November 1931. Andre
Schaeffner holds him by the ankles. Courtesy Mission Dakar-Djibouti, Musee de !'Homme Paris.
Griaule looked initially to visual observation as a source of information

that could be obtained without depending on uncertain oral collaboration,
and could provide the edge needed to provoke, control, and verify confessional discourses. Accustomed to actually looking down on things (his first
job in the Air Force had been that of an aerial spotter and navigator), Griaule
was particularly conscious of the advantages of overview, of the precise mapping of habitats and their surrounding terrain. This visual preoccupation,
apparent in all his methodological works, emerges with disconcerting clarity
in Les Sao /egendaires, his popular account of ethnographic and archeological
work in Tchad (1943:53-76).
Perhaps it's a quirk acquired in military aircraft, but I always resent having to
explore an unknown terrain on foot. Seen from high in the air, a district holds
few secrets. Property is delineated as if in India ink; paths converge on critical
134
]AMES CLIFFORD
points; interior courtyards yield themselves up; the inhabited jumble comes
clear. With an aerial photograph the components of institutions fall into place
as a series of things disassembled, and yielding. Man is silly: he suspects his
neighbor, never the sky; inside the four walls, palisades, fences, or hedges of
an enclosed space he thinks all is permitted. But all his great and small intentions, his sanctuaries, his garbage, his careless repairs, his ambitions for growth.
appear on an aerial photograph. In a village I know in the French Sudan, I
recall having discovered four important sanctuaries at the cost of much hard
land travel, along with platitudes, flattery, payoffs, and unredeemable promises. Seventeen sanctuaries appeared on an aerial photo thanks to the millet
pulp spread out on their domes. All at once the openness of my informants
increased to an unbelievable degree. With an airplane, one fixes the underlying
structure both of topography and of minds.
(Griaule 1943:61-62)
It is not dear whether this passage should be read as enthusiastic publicity

for a new scientific method (Griaule 1937), or as a somewhat disturbing
fantasy of observational power. Griaule seldom had an airplane at his disposal
in the field, but he adopted its panoptic viewpoint as a habit, and a tactic.
The simple fact of drawing up a map could give overview, an initial mastery of the culture inscribed on the land. Recounting the excavation of ancient funeral remains against the wishes of local inhabitants who considered
the graves to be ancestral, Griaule provides an extraordinary phenomenology
of the white outsider's struggle to maintain an edge in dealings with the
native council of elders. Because their oral tradition is a key source of information for where exactly to dig, they must be induced to talk (1943:58).
Griaule is alive to all manner of signs, in behavior and especially in the
terrain, that may eventually serve as entrees into the hidden world of custom.
His questions aim to provoke and confuse, to elicit unguarded responses.
Having arduously mapped the landholdings and habitations of the region he
is able to pose unexpectedly acute queries about incongruous sites that are in
fact sacred-altars, a strange door in a wall, a curious topographic featuretraces of secrets written on the surface of the habitat. The map-making outsider holds a disconcerting authority: he seems already to know where everything is. Revelations follow. New sites are excavated.
For Griaule a map is not only a plan of work, but "a base for combat,"
where "every inscribed position is a conquered position" (1943:66). Throughout
his account'he is conscious of the aggressive, disruptive power of the gaze.
Investigation, looking into something, is never neutral. The researchers feel
themselves under surveillance: "hundreds of eyes follow us. We're in full view
of the village; in every crack in the wall, behind every granary, an eye is
attentive" (64). In opposition stands their scientific observation: "To dig a
hole is to commit an indiscretion, to open an eye onto the past" (68). Every
135
inquest is "a siege to be organized" (60). This particular war of gazes ends
with a nominal truce, a compromise permitting the collection of certain artifacts, while a few especially sacred ones are spared (76). But the theatrical
tug-of-war actually ends with an arrangement entirely to the advantage of
the outsiders, who are able to complete their excavation, remove numerous
relics, and establish ground-rules for later intensive ethnography.
For Griaule, the exhaustive documentation of a culture was a precondition for plumbing its "secrets" through long-term, controlled interrogation of
informants. He did not, of course, believe that complete description was
possible; but often--especially when defending his practice of teamwork against
the Anglo-American model of individual participant-observation-he would
betray panoptical aspirations. His favorite example was the problem of describing a Dogon funeral ceremony, a spectacle involving hundreds of participants. An individual participant-observer would be lost in the melee, jotting
down more or less arbitrary impressions, and with little grasp of the whole.
Griaule argues that the only way adequately to document such an event
is to deploy a team of observers. He offers, characteristically, a map of the
performance site and a set of tactics for its coverage-proceeding rather in
the manner of a modem television crew reporting on an American political
convention (1933:11; 1957:47-52). Observer number one will be stationed
atop a cliff not far from the village square, with the job of photographing and
noting the large-scale movements of the rite; number two is among the menstruating women to one side; three mixes with a band of young torch-bearers;
four observes the group of musicians; five is on the rooftops, "charged with
surveillance in the wings with their thousand indiscretions, and going frequently, along with number six, to the dead man's house in search of the
latest news." Number seven observes the reactions of the women and children to the masked dances and ritual combats taking place at center stage.
All observers note the exact times of their observations, so that a synthetic
portrait of the ritual can be constructed.
This only begins the task of adequate documentation. The synoptic outline thus constructed will later be augmented and corrected by processes of
"verification" and "commentary." Witnesses must be asked for their explanations of obscure gestures. "Holes" in the fabric will be filled in, including
those due to contingencies of a specific performance-the absence or presence of particular groups or individuals, the forgetfulness of the actors, or
any divergences from the rite's "ideal harmony" (50). Slowly, over a number
of years, building on repeat performances if possible, an ideal type of the rite
will be laboriously constructed. But this enormous "dossier" spills out in many
directions, and "each part of the observation becomes the core of an enquiry
which sooner or later will furnish a vast network of information" (51).
Griaule's Methode de l' ethrwgraphie, from which the above account is drawn,
136
]AMES CLIFFORD
provides a rationalized version of his own research practice. It is often unclear

whether the methods propounded are those Griaule actually used, or ideal
recommendations based on a rather more messy experience. But the Methode
gives a good sense of the overall assumptions and parameters of his fieldwork.
In Sanga the Mission Dakar-Djibouti had, in fact, encountered a Dogon
funeral, a dramatic, confusing rite featuring spectacular performances by masked
dancers. Griaule set about its documentation: his subsequent work would
center on the secret society of masks, and various of his co-workers contrib
uted related studies (Leiris 1948; De Ganay 1941; Dieterlen 1941). By dint
of repeated visits and intensive collaborative work, an organized corpus of
"documents" was built up.
Griaule's focus on the institution of masks did not involve a synecdochic
representation of culture as a whole in the functionalist tradition (using the
mask society as either an ideal-typical "institution" or its rituals as "totalizing
cultural performances"). Rather, working out from this dense cluster of total
social facts he and his associates constructed a "vast network of information"
as a context and control for what natives themselves said about their culture.
Initially, in his "documentary" phase, Griaule used the explications of infor
mants as commentaries on observed behavior and collected artifacts. But this
attitude would change, especially after Ogotemmeli: once properly tested and
qualified, informants could be trusted with research tasks. With proper con
trol, they could become regular auxiliaries and, in effect, members of the
team. The network of observation and documentation could thus be dramat
ically extended (Griaule 1957:61-64). Teamwork was an efficient way to deal
with total social facts, to produce a full documentation on a multiplicity of
subjects treated in diverse manners.
As conceived by Griaule, the team was much more than a makeshift collaboration of individuals. It embodied the principle underlying all modem
inquiry: specialization and the division of labor. Because social reality was
too complex for the single researcher, he must "rely on other specialists and
try to form with them a thinking group, an element of combat, a tactical
unit of research in which each person, while holding to his own personal
qualities, knows he is an intelligent cog of a machine in which he is indis
pensable, but without which he is nothing" (1957:26). Some of Griaule's
early co-workers, like Leiris, Schaeffner, and Paulme, did not find enduring
places within this productive mechanism-Leiris' scandalous L'Afrique fan
t6me (1934) was a clear breach of discipline. But others (De Ganay, Dieter
len, Lebeuf, and Calame-Griaule), if not precisely "intelligent cogs," worked
freely within the developing paradigm. Griaule spoke of his ideal team in
terms of organic solidarity and a quasi-military esprit de corps, and the works
of the school do suggest an efficient collaborative enterprise. But as a productive mechanism, the "team" could never be tightly controlled. And when
137
one includes as active agents the Dogan informants, translators, and tribal
authorities-whose influence on the content and timing of the knowledge
gained was crucial-it becomes apparent that the collaborative documentary
experience initiated by Griaule in 1932 had, by the fifties, undergone a metamorphosis.
How, before Ogotemmeli, did Griaule "choose," "identify," "interrogate,"
and "utilize" informants? (1952c:542-47; 1957:54-61) His methodological
strictures are particularly revealing since, as his respect for African oral tradition grew, he came increasingly to center his research on close work with
a limited number of collaborateurs indigenes. The informant must first be carefully identified and located in a specific group or set of groups within the
social fabric. In this way one can allow for exaggerators, and for omissions
related to group loyalty, taboos, etc. He or she-in fact Griaule's informants,
as he regretfully noted, were almost entirely men (1957:15)-has to be qualified to pronounce on particular subjects, whether technological, historical,
legal, or religious. His "moral qualities" are to be assessed: sincerity, good
faith, memory. Although many of his informants were significantly influenced by "outside" perspectives (Lettens 1971:520-35), Griaule weighed
heavily the attachment to tradition, mistrusting Christians, Muslims, and
individuals with too much prior contact with whites (1957:57).
Every informant, Griaule assumes, enunciates a different kind of truth,
and the ethnographer must be constantly alive to its limitations, strengths,
and weaknesses. In his Methode he discusses different kinds of "liars." Indeed,
throughout his work he is preoccupied with lies-although not as simple
untruths. Each informant, even the most sincere, experiences an "instinctive
need to dissimulate particularly delicate points. He will gladly take advantage
of the slightest chance to escape the subject and dwell on another" (1957:58).
Native collaborators "lie" in jest, by venality, by desire to please, or in fear
of neighbors and the gods (56). Forgetful informants or Europeanized informants are particularly dangerous types of "liars." In an ethnographic "strategic
operation" (59), the investigator must break through initial defenses and
dissimulations. Often an individual informant must be isolated for intensive
questioning, so as to remove inhibiting social pressures (60). When their
testimony is confronted with differing versions gained from other interviews,
hard-pressed informants enunciate truths they had not intended to reveal.
On one occasion Griaule permits himself to dream of an "ideal" situation:
"an infinity of separated informants" (1943:62). On the other hand, it may
sometimes be profitable to pursue inquiries in public, especially over delicate
problems like land tenure, where the researcher can provoke revealing disputes with their inevitable indiscretions (1943:66-68; 1957:60).
Griaule's tactics are varied; but they have in common an active, aggressive
posture not unlike the judicial process of "interrogation" (1952:542, 547):
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JAMES CLIFFORD
"The role of the person sniffing out social facts is often comparable to that of
a detective or examining magistrate. The fact is the crime, the interlocutor
the guilty party; all the society's members are accomplices" (1957:59). He is
fascinated by the tactics of oral inquiry, the play of truth and falsehood that
can lead into "labyrinths" that are "organized." Like a psychoanalyst, he be
gins to see patterns of resistance, forgetfulness, and omission not as mere
obstacles, but as signs of a deeper structuring of the truth:
The informant, on first contact, seldom offers much resistance. He lets himself
be backed into positions he has been able to organize in the course of feeling
out the situation, observing the quirks, skills, and awkwardnesses of his interlocutor. The value of these positions depends on what he can make of them;
he resists as best he can. And if they are taken by force? After other similar
resistances, he will retreat to a final position which depends neither on himself
nor his "adversary" but on the system of prohibitions of custom.
(1952c:59-60)
For Griaule, the deep structure of resistances is not specific to an inter-subjective

encounter, but derives from a general source, the rules of "custom." This
hypostatized entity is the last bastion to be stormed. But as we shall see, it
cannot be conquered by frontal assault, by the tactical processes of observa
tion, documentation, or interrogation. A different "initiatory" process will
come into play.
Designed for beginning fieldworkers, Griaule's treatises on ethnographic
technique remain largely within the "documentary" paradigm. Moreover,
Griaule probably did not have time fully to digest the methodological con
sequences of Ogotemmeli's revelations or of the gathering critique of colonial
knowledge in the decade before the Methode was published. It is probably
best to read this rather mechanistic compendium of techniques as a less than
successful attempt to control an unruly research process, in Georges Dever
eux's terms (1967), a passage from anxiety to method. Griaule's ultimate
complex reciprocal involvement with the Dogon is hardly captured in sec
tion titles like "The detection and observation of human facts," or in the
portrayal of ethnographers and indigenous collaborators as builders of infor
mation networks, collectors of "documents," compilers of "dossiers." Ethnog
raphy, in Griaule's juridical language, is still here akin to the process of in
struction-in French law, the preliminary establishment of the facts of a case,
before the jugement proper (1957:51). Working among interested parties the
ethnographer uses the far-reaching powers of the juge d'instruction (one of
Griaule's favorite metaphors), to smoke out the truth (cf. Ehrmann 1976).
Generally respecting the division of labor laid down by Mauss, and suspicious
of abstractions and systematic cross-cultural comparison, Griaule leaves mat
ters of theory and explanation to others outside the fray. The juge d'instruc
PowER AND DIALOGUE: MARCEL Ga1AULE
139
tion, having collected enough reliable documents, and having cross-checked

his witnesses' versions of the facts, has in his possession everything he needs
to determine the truth.
But by 1950, these attitudes toward observation and interrogation were
becoming generally suspect, and Griaule's early documentary metaphor was
no longer adequate to a research process that was taking on a life of its own.
Gradually, Griaule's understanding of the Dogon was becoming indistinguishable from their own increasingly elaborate explications. The originality of
the ethnographic activity he set in motion was that it uncovered-and to an
undetermined extent provoked-a sophisticated interpretation of their culture by a group of influential Dogon.
IRONIES
Before considering the second phase of Griaule's work, it is worth stepping
back for a moment from his research styles and tactics to suggest their relation to the colonial situation. Griaule provides us with a kind of dramaturgy
of ethnographic experience before the fifties. In an extraordinary passageincluded in both early and late discussions of methodology-he evokes the
gamut of power-laden roles adopted by an ethnographer eliciting information
from an informant. "Ethnographie active," he writes, is "the art of being a
midwife and an examining magistrate":
By turns an affable comrade of the person put to cross-examination, a distant
friend, a severe stranger, compassionate father, a concerned patron; a trader
paying for revelations one by one, a listener affecting distraction before the
open gates of the most dangerous mysteries, an obliging friend showing lively
interest for the most insipid family stories-the ethnographer parades across
his face as pretty a collection of masks as that possessed by any museum.
(Griaule 1933:10; 1952c:547; 1957:59)
The passage evokes a theme infusing all Griaule's work-that ethnography
is a theatrical undertaking. His dramaturgy does not, however, include a role
popular among fieldworkers in the Anglo-American tradition: the persona of
the earnest learner, often cast as a child in the process of acquiring, of beinlil
taught, adult knowledge. Perhaps this persona did not occur to Griaule because, seconded by interpreters and European co-workers, he never actually
experienced the position of being a stammerer, helpless in an alien culture.
It was only after 1950, late in his career, that he began to adopt the standpoint of a student with respect to Dogon culture. But this role was always
mixed with the less vulnerable authority of initiate, spokesman, and exegete.
140
]AMES CLIFFORD
At least in his writings, Griaule never abandoned a basic confidence, a sense

of ultimate control over the research and its products. But maintaining con
trol was always a battle, at best a joking relation. Griaule never presented
fieldwork as an innocent attainment of rapport analogous to friendship. Nor
did he naturalize the process as an experience of education or growth (child
or adolescent becoming adult), or as acceptance into an extended family (a
kinship role given to the ethnographer). Rather, his accounts assumed a re
curring conflict of interests, an agonistic drama, resulting in mutual respect,
complicity in a productive balance of power.
Griaule's writings are unusual in their sharp awareness of a structural power
differential and a substratum of violence underlying all relations between
whites and blacks in a colonial situation. For example, in Les Fl.ambeurs
d'hommes, an adventure story Griaule called "an objective description of cer
tain episodes from my first trip to Abyssinia" (1953:vi), he coolly notes a
"given" of colonial life: the members of his caravan having shown themselves
reluctant to attempt a tricky fording of the Nile, "there followed blows, given
by the White Man and not returned; for a White is always a man of the
government, and if you touch him complications ensue" (7-8). A revealing
stylistic device is deployed here, as elsewhere in Griaule's accounts of fieldwork (1948a): a use of the passive voice and of generic terms for himself"the White Man," "the European," "the Traveller," "the Nazarite," "the Foreigner." The story of the beatings suggests an automatic series of events, to
which all parties acquiesce. A European in Africa cannot, should not, avoid
the parts reserved for him. Griaule does not think of eluding the privileges,
and constraints, of his ascribed status-a dream that obsesses, and to a degree
paralyzes, Michel Leiris, his colleague of the Mission Dakar-Djibouti. Leiris'
field journal ( 1934) and his later writings, both ethnological and literary,
portray a slow reconciliation with a theatrical conception of the self. But his
acceptance is always ambivalent, in creative conflict with a desire for im
mediate contact and participation (Clifford 1982b). Griaule, by contrast,
harbors no qualms about his own theatricality. Once this is clear, puzzling
aspects of his practice become clearer-for example, his ideal "coverage" of
the Dagon funeral.
Griaule's elaborate panoptic plan will raise the hackles of any ethnographer schooled in participant-observation. The crew he envisages must necessarily disturb and perhaps orient the course of the ceremony, but this does
not seem to concern Griaule. Does he naively imagine that seven observers
wili not exert a considerable influence? The question is beside the point, for
Griaule never thought of being an unobtrusive participant. His research was
manifestly an intrusion; he made no pretense that it be otherwise. Thus, to
an important degree, the truth he recorded was a truth provoked by ethnography. One is tempted to speak of an "ethnographie vb-ice" analogous to the
141
cinema vente pioneered by Griaule's later associate Jean Rouch-not a reality

objectively recorded by the camera, but one provoked by its active presence
(Rouch 1978).
One suspects that Griaule saw culture itself, like personality, as a perform
ance or spectacle. In the years following the Dakar-Djibouti mission Griaule
and his teams turned up every year or so at Sanga. The arrival of these in
creasingly familiar outsiders was a dramatic event. Time was of the essence;
informants were mobilized, rituals acted for the cameras, and as much Dagon
life as possible recorded. In fact, Griaule's early research tended to concen
trate on aspects of cultural life susceptible to demonstration and perform
ance: masks, public rituals, and games. It is significant in this regard that
Sanga, the Dagon community most accustomed to ethnography, is today the
region's principal tourist center, routinely performing its dances for outsiders
(Imperato 1978:7-32).
Griaule's penchant for the dramatic infuses his work; and for the historian
this poses problems of interpretation. For example, a heightened but char
acteristic passage in Les Sa6 legendaires exults in a breakthrough. Having
maneuvered native interlocutors into giving up information they had not
intended to divulge, Griaule contemplates the promise of future work in
the area:
We would be able to make asses of the old hesitators, to confound the traitors,
abominate the silent. We were going to see mysteries leap like reptiles from
the mouths of the neatly caught liars. We would play with the victim; we would
rub his nose in his words. We'd make him smile, spit up the truth, and we'd
tum out of his pockets the last secret polished by the centuries, a secret to
make he who has spoken it blanch with fear.
(Griaule 1943:74)
How is one to read such a passage? Griaule always liked to provoke: a passage
written to shock in 1943 is still shocking, and puzzling. In the narrative to
which it is a kind of climax, one watches with discomfort and with growing
anger as the ethnographer bullies, cajoles, manipulates those whose resist
ance interferes with his inquiry, natives who do not wish to see their ancestral
remains collected in the interests of a foreign science. But Griaule will not
permit us to dismbs him out of hand. If we now perceive such attitudes and
acts as an embarrassment, it is thanks to Griaule that we see them so clearly.
He rubs our nose in them.
Because Griaule played colonial roles with gusto and with a certain irony,
the words quoted above cannot be placed neatly in their historical context
and dismissed as attitudes unfortunately possible in the colonial period. It
was more typical of the period to hide such violence than to bring it to the
fore. Yet if the violence is, in some sense, Griaule's point, nowhere does he
142
JAMES CLIFFORD
suggest a criticism of forced confessions in ethnography. On the contrary, his

methodological writings give instructions on how to provoke them. Griaule
does not express serious second thoughts about establishing dominance, find
ing and exploiting the weakness, disunity, and confusion of his native hosts.
Thus an historical reading of such awkward passages cannot understand Griaule
as either a typical participant or a self-conscious critic within the colonial
situation. His position is more complex.
One is tempted to ascribe such passages to Griaule's "style"-his penchant
for banter, for charged metaphors, for provocation. But this merely raises the
question of how a style functions as part of a research activity, and how it
plays against an ideological milieu. Griaule's style is not merely, as some have
assumed, a faiblesse, a distracting and unfortunate deviation from the scien
tific business at hand (Lettens 1971: 12, 491). It is rather a meaningful re
sponse to a predicament, a set of roles and discursive possibilities that may
be called ethnographic liberalism. A complex, contentious recent debate on
anthropology and empire has largely established that ethnographers before
the 1950s acquiesced in colonial regimes (Leiris 1950; Asad 1973; Copans
1974). White rule or cultural dominance was a given context for their work,
and they adopted a range of liberal positions within it. Seldom "colonialists"
in any direct, instrumental sense, ethnographers accepted certain constraints
while, in varying degrees, questioning them. This ambivalent predicament
imposed certain roles.
Griaule's style of ethnographic liberalism may be understood both as a
dramatic performance and as a mode of irony. The most acute observers of
the colonial situation, Orwell and Conrad for example, have portrayed it as
a power-laden, ambiguous world of discontinuous, clashing realities. Like the
young district officer who unwillingly shoots an elephant to avoid being laughed
at by a crowd of Burmese, and like all the characters in Heart of Darkness,
displaced Europeans must labor to maintain their cultural identities, however
artificial these may appear. Both colonial and ethnographic situations pro
voke the unnerving feeling of being on stage, observed and out of place.
Participants in such milieux are caught in roles they cannot choose. We have
seen Griaule's heightened awareness of the masks worn as part of fieldwork's
clash of wills, wits, bluffs, and strategies. He is not unique in stressing the
importance of theatricality and impression management in ethnography, the
sense that research relationships develop "behind many masks" (Berreman
1962). And most ethnographers, like him, have rejected the pretense of
going native, of being able to shed a fundamental Europeanness. But only a
few have portrayed so clearly the tactical dissimulations and irreducible vio
lence of ethnographic work (Rabinow 1977: 129-30).
Unlike a Conrad, Orwell, or Leiris, Griaule seems not oppressed by his
role-playing. But although he is not critical, he is ironic. If he compares
143
ethnography to a theatre of war or a judicial proceeding, one need not assume

that in the field he acted consistently as a company commander or an ex
amining magistrate. To take Griaule's metaphors at face value is to miss their
implicit analytical function. And it is also to push aside his other personae:
his charm, his temper, his playful banter, his growing sympathy, even love,
for the Dogon.
Ethnographic liberals, of which there are many sorts, have tended to be
ironic participators. They have sought ways to stand out, or apart, from the
imperial roles reserved for them as Whites. There have been frequent variations on Delafosse's broussard. Many have, in one way or another, publicly
identified themselves with exotic modes of life and thought or cultivated an
image of marginality. Griaule's exaggeration is another response. Ethno
graphic liberalism is an array of ironic positions, roles both within, and at a
certain remove from, the colonial situation. Its complete dramaturgy remains
to be written.
The political and ethical tensions visible in Griaule's writings have only
recently become explicit subjects of analysis. A penetrating paragraph writ
ten in 1968 by Clifford Geertz reflects the beginning of the end of innocence
in fieldwork:
Usually the sense of being members, however temporarily, insecurely and in
completely, of a single moral community, can be maintained even in the face
of the wider social realities which press in at almost every moment to deny it.
It is this fiction-fiction, not falsehood-that lies at the very heart of successful anthropological field research; and, because it is never completely convincing for any of the participants, it renders such researc.:h, considered as a fonn
of conduct, continuously ironic.
(1968:154)
By the late sixties the romantic mythology of fieldwork rapport had begun
publicly to dissolve. Since then a growing reflexivity in ethnographic thought
and practice has deepened the recognition of its ironic structure, its reliance
on improvised, historically contingent fictions. This new awareness makes
possible a reading of Griaule that sees a theatrical, ironic stance as central to
his ethnographic work.
INITIATION
Although Griaule's sense of the moral tension and violence inherent in field
work was unusually acute, he developed nonetheless an enabling fiction of
reciprocal encounter with the Dogon. This fiction, not falsehood, is most
144
}AMES CLIFFORD
clearly embodied in the work after Ogotemmeli. In Griaule's ongoing re

search (closely linked with that of Oieterlen) one sees the overlay of an
ethnographic fiction (Oogon initiatory knowledge) by a fiction of ethnogra
phy (fieldwork as initiation). To account for this doubling we may return to
Geertz's ironic fiction of moral community, which he sees as dissipating, tern
porarily at least, the ethical tensions inherent in fieldwork. Geertz under
mines the myth of ethnographic rapport before reinstating it in an ironic
mode. Like Griaule he seems to accept that all parties to the encounter rec
ognize its elements of insincerity, hypocrisy, and self-deception. He sees this
recognition as a precondition for a lived fiction (a drama, in Griaule's terms)
that is in some very guarded, but real, sense genuine. Just how this productive complicity is actually enacted is always difficult to know. But if, as Geertz
suggests, such lived fictions are central to successful ethnographic research,
then we may expect to find them reflected in the texts that organize, narrate,
and generally account for the truths learned in fieldwork. In fact, many ethnographies include some partial account of fieldwork as part of their representation of a cultural reality. But whether or not an explicit or implicit
fieldwork narrative appears in the ethnography, its very shape-the defini
tion of its topic, the horizon of what it can represent-is a textual expression
of the performed fiction of community that has enabled the research. Thus,
and with varying degrees of explicitness, ethnographies are fictions both of
another cultural reality and of their own mode of production. This is unusually clear in the late work of Griaule and Dieterlen, where "initiation"
provides the common organizing metaphor.
To say that ethnography is like initiation is not to recommend that the
researcher should actually undergo the processes by which a native attains
the wisdom of the group. Griaule has little use for such a "camedie" (1952c:549).
The metaphor of initiation evokes, rather, the deepening of understanding
that accrues to long-term field research with repeated visits throughout the
anthropologist's career. It evokes, too, a qualitative change in ethnographic
relationships occurring as a culmination of the long, persistent documentary
process. Initiation finally gives access to a privileged stratum of native understanding, something Griaule claimed was "a demonstration, summary but
complete, of the functioning of a society." The ethnographer, rather than
trying to blend into the society under study, "plays his stranger's role." A
friendly but determined outsider, pressing constantly against customary in
terdictions, the ethnographer comes to be seen as someone who, precisely
because of his or her exteriority with respect to native institutions, is unlikely
to falsify them. "If he is to receive instructions and revelations that are the
equivalent, and even superior to those enjoyed by initiates, the researcher
must remain himself. He will be careful not to try to gain time by telescoping
145
Marcel Griaule and Michel Leiris prepare to sacrifice chickens before the Kono altar ar
Kemeni, September 6, 1931, as a condition of entry to the sanctuary. Courtesy Mission Dakar
Djibouti, Musee de ('Homme, Paris.
the information; rather he will follow steps parallel to those of initiation ns

it is practiced by the men of the society" (548).
The narrative of "parallel" (or specifically ethnographic) initiation appears
prominently in Le Renard pale and Conversations with Ogotemmeli. The first
decade of documentary work at Sanga had unfolded at the lowest of four
stages of Dogon initiatory knowledge. All the early questions of the Griaulc
team were answered at a level of instruction offered by elders to beginncrsthe parole de face. But the ethnographers returned repeatedly. They proved
their good faith: Griaule, for example, used his aerial photography to advisl~
the Dogon on crucial questions of water management. Gradually the persis
146
)AMES CLIFFORD
tent researchers approached deeper, secret levels of cultural knowledge. Then"The Dogon made a decision" (Griaule & Dieterlen 1965:54). The local
patriarchs met and decided to instruct Griaule in la parole claire-the highest,
most complete stage of initiatory knowledge. Ogotemmeli would begin the
task. Others continued when he died shortly after his famous conversations
with Griaule.
Taken as a whole this narrative is certainly too neat, and patently selfjustificatory. 3 But whether or not the "decision" by "the Dogon" was moti
vated in just this way, and whatever the exact status of Ogotemmeli's dis
course (individual speculation or cultural knowledge), the overall initiatory
paradigm does raise important questions about short and long-term ethnog
raphy. There can be no doubt that Griaule's repeated visits resulted in a
progressive, qualitative deepening of his understanding. Open-ended, long
term study may well yield results that differ importantly from those of inten
sive sojourns of a year or two, followed perhaps by a later return visit to
measure "change" (Foster et al. 1979). The aging of both fieldworkers and
informants, the accumulated experience of cooperative work over decades,
produce at least the effect of a deepening knowledge. To conceive of this
experience as an initiation has the merit of including indigenous "teachers"
as central subjects in the process. Dogon instruction of Griaule in la parole
claire is also an implicit criticism of the earlier "documentaries" research;
indeed, one wonders if most ethnographies generated over a relatively narrow
time span may not be paroles de face. The narrative of initiation sharply ques
tions approaches that do not strive for a certain level of complexity in rep
resenting "the native point of view." Ogotemmeli's initiative need not be
portrayed as a completion (in Griaule's words a couronnement) of the earlier
research. It can also be seen as a comment on it, and a shifting of its episte
mological basis. And here the Dogan "side" of the story remains problematic:
direct evidence is lacking, and the initiatory narrative with its assumed teleology-a progress toward the most complete possible knowledge-ceases to
be helpful.
Ogotemmeli's intervention was clearly a crucial tum in the research pro
cess. It revealed the extent of Dogon control over the kind of information
accessible to the ethnographers. It announced a new style of research in
which the authority of informants was more explicitly recognized. No longer
untrustworthy witnesses subjected to cross-examination, the Dogon "doc
tors," Ogotemmeli and his successors, were now learned interlocutors. During
3. We need not go as far as Lettens (1971:509), who suggests that the entire initiatory logic
of progressively revealed secrets was an invention of Griaule to cover up the failures of his first
phase of research, in the light of Ogotemmeli's revelations. Lettens' extreme skepticism is largely
unsubstantiated and unconvincing, given widespread evidence for Sudanese initiatory systems,
and given his rather rigid and literalist conception of initiatory processes.
147
the "documentary" phase of the research the ethnographer had been an aggressive collector of observations, artifacts and texts. Now he or she was a
transcriber of formulated lore, a translator, exegete, and commentator. In
Griaule's account of their meetings, Ogotemmeli is not interrogated in the
manner outlined in the Methode de l'ethnographie. "Le blanc," "the Nazarite,"
as Griaule now sometimes calls himself, has become a student; the secret is
communicated freely, not confessed.
However, the documentary and initiatory paradigms are linked by important underlying assumptions. To see ethnography either as extracting confessions or undergoing initiation, one must assume the existence and importance of secrets. Cultural truth is structured, in both cases, as something to
be revealed (Griaule's frequent word is decele: disclosed, divulged, detected,
uncovered). Moreover, the new paradigm incorporates the theatrical conception of fieldwork. In a "parallel" initiation the ethnographer plays the part of
an initiate, the informant an instructor. A dramatic relationship, recognized
as such by both parties, becomes the enabling fiction of encounter. Indeed,
if all performances are controlled revelations presupposing a "back region"
hidden from view where the performance is prepared and to which access is
limited (Goffman 1959:238; Berreman 1962:xxxii}, then a theatrical model
of relationships necessarily presupposes secrets. Thus an underlying logic of
the secret unites the two phases of Griaule's career. 4 Whether the ethnographer is a relentless "judge" or helping "midwife" the truth must always emerge,
be brought to light. And as an initiate, the researcher receives and interprets
revelations.
This view of the emergence of truth may be contrasted with a conception
of ethnography as a dialogical enterprise in which both researchers and natives are active creators, or, to stretch a term, authors of cultural representations. In fact, Griaule's experience with the Dogon may be better accounted for in this second perspective. But to say this presupposes a critique
of initiatory authority. Dialogical, constructivist paradigms tend to disperse,
or share out ethnographic authority, while narratives of initiation confirm
the researcher's special competence. Initiation assumes an experience of progressive, connected revelations, of getting behind half-truths and taboos, of
being instructed by authentically qualified members of a community. This
experience of a deepening "education" empowers the ethnographer to speak
4. Jamin ( 1982:88-89) discusses this aspect of Griaule's work. And for a stimulating treatment of the social functions of secrets see his Les lois du silence ( 1977). Secrets are part of the
mise en scene sociale, generators of group identities and of cultural meanings which, not goals to
be finally attained, are "endlessly deferred and dissimulated" (104). My discussion, below, of the
exegetical function of la parole claire draws on this general perspective, as well as on Kermode
(1980). For a trenchant critique of the "cryptological" assumptions underlying Griaule's and
many "symbolic anthropologists'" practice see Sperber ( 1975: 17-50).
148
)AMES CLIFFORD
as an insider, on behalf of the community's truth or reality. Though all cultural learning includes an initiatory dimension, Griaule presses its logic to
the limit: "proceeding by means of successive investigations among more and
more knowledgeable strata of the society it is possible to considerably reduce
a population's area of esoteric knowledge, the only one, to tell the truth, that
is important, since it constitutes the native key to the system of thought and
action" ( 1952c:545).
This "native key" began to emerge for Griaule and his co-workers in the
late forties. The landmark books announcing its discovery were Dieu d' eau
(Conversations with Ogotemmeli) and Dieterlen's Essai sur la religion Bambara
(1951). The two works revealed a "deep thought among the blacks," "an
intricate network of representations" (Dieterlen 1951:227). The "innumer
able correspondences" of the Bambara and Dogon emerged as a "coherent
tableau," a "metaphysic" (Griaule 195l:ix). Once Ogotemmeli had, in thirty
,three days of meandering talk, enunciated the basic outlines of Dogon cos
mogonic myth, an enormous work of elucidation remained. As recorded in
Griaule's day-by-day account, his discourse was riddled with gaps and contra
dictions. The cultural master-script he sketched would require elaborate ex
egesis, cross-checking against other versions of myths, and attention to the
script's enactment in virtually every domain of collective life.
This work was to occupy Griaule and his co-workers for decades. It would
also occupy their small group of key informants, drawn from the estimated 5
percent of "completely instructed" Dogon in the Sanga region, as well as from
the 15 percent of the population who possessed a fair portion of the secret
knowledge (Griaule 1952a:32). There is disagreement about the precise na
ture of the Dogon "revelations" produced in this collaboration. Some have
seen them as theological speculations by individual Dogon, or as mythopoeic
inventions (Goody 1969:241; Lewis 1973:16; Copans 1973:156). Griaule
and Dieterlen, however, strongly reject the notion that the knowledge they
report is in any significant sense the original creation of specific Dogon. In
their view, the uniformity of custom and the widespread behavioral articulation of the esoteric knowledge makes it unlikely that any individual could do
more than slightly inflect the enduring mythic structures. But to pose the
issue as a debate between personal originality and cultural typicality (cf.
Hountondji 1976:79-101) is probably fruitless, given our ignorance about
key informants. It is based also on a false dichotomy: all authors, whether
African or European, are original only within limited symbolic resources, and
in restricted relations of textual production.
It is tempting to portray the late works of the Griaule school, in the words
of Pierre Alexandre, as "second level ethnography-the ethnography of Dogon ethnography" (1973:4). But the notion of "levels" is misleading, and
does not do justice to the way Griaule's version of custom and the versions
149
enunciated by Dagon informants are dialogically implicated one in the other.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to separate clearly Dagon ethnography from
Griaule's ethnography. They form a common project: the textualization and
exegesis of a traditional system of knowledge. The cultural "text" does not
exist prior to its interpretation; it is not dictated by fully instructed informants and then explicated and contextualized at a second "level" by European ethnographers. Griaule and Dieterlen give evidence that there can, in
fact, be no complete version of the Dogan "metaphysic." If, in Griaule's telling metaphor, it is "written" throughout the culture-in the habitat, in gestures, in the system of graphic signs-these traces are of the order of a mnemonicon rather than of a complete inscription. In fact, a "fully instructed"
Dagon will spend a lifetime mastering la parole claire. To grasp the full range
of its symbolic correspondences, signs, myths, rites, and everyday gestures,
requires a continuous process of concrete poesis. The mythic "word" is endlessly materialized, exchanged, interpreted. And because stable order is relentlessly disrupted by the forces of disorder, incarnate in the mythic fox,
cosmos and society are constantly reinscribed.
The ethnographic encounter is one of the occasions of this reinscription,
but with a significant difference. Now the Dagon dialectic of order and disorder takes place on a world stage, leading to the inscription of a new kind
of totality, a Dogan essence or culture. In Le Renard pale we see an attempt
to establish a cultural base line, to separate off, for example, "commentaries"
by informants from the recorded myths and variants. But it is unclear how
rigorously such a separation can be made, for as Dieterlen says, these glosses
demonstrate the Dagon propensity to "speculate on the history of creation,"
illustrating "the native development of thought on the basis of mythic facts"
(Griaule & Dieterlen 1965:56). The development of mythic thought, as of
any thought, is both structured and open-ended. But the activity of exegesis
depends on the positing of a restricted set of symbols by the hermeneutical
imagination. There must, in principle, be a stable corpus for interpretation.
Griaule's "full" initiatory knowledge-which can never be expressed in its
entirety-functions in this canonical manner. It provides a stopping point
for the process of cultural representatiqn. On the basis of this original masterscript, a potentially endless exegetical discourse can be generated. La parole
claire, like any primal text or ground of authority, acts to structure and empower interpretation.
Griaule's paradigm of initiation functioned to transform the ethnographer's role from observer and documenter of Dagon culture to exegete and
interpreter. It preserved and reformulated, however, the dominant themes of
his earlier practice: the logic of the secret, an aspiration to exhaustive knowledge, a vision of fieldwork as role-playing. It expressed also the sense one has
throughout Griaule's career of his Dagon counterparts as powerful agents in
150
]AMES CLIFFORD
the ethnographic process: initially clever tacticians and willful resisters, later
teachers and colleagues. By attaining la parole claire and working like any
initiate to grasp the "word's" incarnation in the experiential world, Griaule
becomes (always in his parallel, "ethnographic" position) one of a restricted
group of "doctors" or "metaphysicians" who control and interpret Dogon
knowledge. Griaule is an insider, but with a difference. For it is as though
the Dogon had recognized the need for a kind of cultural ambassador, a qual
ified representative who would dramatize and defend their culture in the co
lonial world, and beyond. Griaule, in any case, acted as if this were his role.
The stance of the ethnographer who speaks as an insider on behalf of his
or her people is a familiar one-it is a stock role of the ethnographic liberal.
Griaule adopted this standpoint in the early fifties, with confidence and au
thority. An active advocate and mediator in the colonial politics of the Sanga
region, he effected a reconciliation between traditional Dogon authorities
and the new chiefs installed by the government (Ogona d'Arou 1956:9). In
a variety of forums, from the pages of Presence Africaine to UNESCO inter
national gatherings, to the Assembly of the Union Frarn;aise (where he served
as President of the Commission on Cultural Affairs), he urged respect for the
traditions of Africa. Fortified by Ogotemmeli's revelations, he portrayed in
elaborate detail a mode of knowledge to rival, or surpass, the Occidental
legacy of the Greeks. Speaking personally, in the voice of an initiate, he
could report that "with them, everything seems truer, more noble, that is to
say more classical. This may not be the impression you have from the outside,
but as for me, each day I seem to be discovering something more beautiful,
more shaped, more solid" (1951: 166). One senses in the work of Griaule and
among his co-workers-especially Germaine Dieterlen-a profound, sometimes mystical engagement with the Dogon sophie (Rouch 1978b:l l-17). But
whereas Dieterlen has tended to efface her own authority behind that of the
Dogon, Griaule, who lived to see only the beginnings of "decolonization,"
spoke in frankly paternalist accents as an advocate for African traditional
cultures.
His late generalizations are governed by a familiar chain of synecdoches.
Ogotemmeli and Sanga stand for the Dogon, the Dogon for the traditional
Sudan, the Sudan for Black Africa, Africa for "l'homme noir." Griaule moves
freely from level to level, constructing an elemental civilization strikingly
different from that of Europe. But difference is established only to be dissolved in a totalizing humanism (1952b:24). Once traditional African essence is characterized and sympathetically defended, it is then portrayed, in
the last instance, as a response to "the same great principle, to the same great
human uncertainties" that Western science and philosophy have engaged
(1951: 166). The ethnographer speaks as a participant in two civilizations,
PowER AND DIALOGUE: MARCEL Ga1AULE
151
which by means of his initiatory experience and special knowledge can be

brought together at a "human" level.
In the early fifties, Griaule presents himself as someone who knows Africa;
and he knows, too, what is good for Africa. Ethnographic understanding is
critical in a changing colonial context: it permits one to "select those moral
values which are of merit and should be preserved," to "decide what institutions and what systems of thought should be preserved and propagated in
Black Africa" (1953:372). Tradition must be well understood so that change
can be properly guided. "It is a question of taking what's theirs that is rich,
and transposing it into our own situation, or into the situation we wish to
make for them (1951:163). Griaule's "we" belongs to 1951 and the colonial
Union Fra11faise, of which he was a Councilor.
The cultural riches that will somehow be preserved or transposed are always located in the domain of tradition or "authentic" custom-an area more
or less free of European or Islamic influences. But the ethnographic liberal
who represents the essence of a culture against impure "outside" forces encounters sooner or later a contradiction built into all such discourses that
resist, or try to stand outside, historical invention. The most persistent critics
of Griaule's defense of Africa were educated Africans, "evolues," who rejected
any reification of their cultural past, however sympathetic. Griaule tended
to explain away these resistances as unfortunate consequences of an unbalanced education: "You can't be simultaneously at school and in the sacred
grove" (1951:164; Malraux 1957:15). The black intellectuals who objected
to his eloquent portrayals of their traditions were no longer authentically
African, but victims of "that kind of 'leading astray of minors' which all
colonial powers have indulged in" (1953:376).
Such statements no longer carry the authority Griaule was able to impart
to them in the early fifties and were in fact challenged on the occasion of
their enunciation (Griaule 1951, discussion:147-66). More congenial today
are the views expressed at the same moment by Griaule's early colleague,
Michel Leiris. A brief final contrast will evoke the changing ideological situation in the years before Griaule's death, a situation in which ethnography
is still enmeshed.
Leiris was perhaps the first ethnographer to confront squarely the political
and epistemological constraints of colonialism on fieldwork (Leiris 1950). He
viewed the ethnographer as a natural advocate for exploited peoples, and he
warned against definitions of authenticity that excluded evolues and the impurities of cultural syncretism. Both Leiris and Griaule contributed essays in
1953 to a UNESCO collection entitled Interrelations of Cultures. The differences in their approaches are still instructive today. Griaule's "The Problem
of Negro Culture" argues that "traditional religions, as well as the social and
152
}AMES CLIFFORD
legal structure and technical crafts of the black races emanate from a single,
rigid system of thought-a system that provides an interpretation of the uni
verse, as well as a philosophy enabling the tribe to carry on and the individ
ual to lead a balanced life" (1953:361). Dogon and Bambara examples are
elicited to illustrate this "metaphysical substratum," which Griaule presents
throughout as characteristic of "the Negro," or of "negro culture" (362).
Leiris, in approaching his topic, "The African Negroes and the Arts of
Carving and Sculpture," evokes a historically specific problem of intercultural
translation. He begins by tracing the discovery of "art negre" among the avant
garde in the early century, Europeans inventing an African aesthetics for
their own artistic purposes. He then throws doubt on his own undertaking
by pointing out the absurdity of an African attempting in a short essay to
deal with the whole of "European sculpture." He proceeds to base his gener
alizations about "African" art, not on any presumption of a common essence,
but on a contingent perspective. He writes as a Westerner perceiving simi
larities among the diverse sculptures of Africa and even presenting them as
expressions of a "civilization," while understanding these ensembles to be, in
a sense, optical illusions. The apparent unity of black art forms inheres only
in a perception of the common ways they differ from those to which a Euro
pean is accustomed. This refusal to represent an exotic essence-an impor
tant issue of epistemological tact-is based (in part at l~ast) on the ways
Leiris' ethnographic career diverged from that of his co-worker on the Mis
sion Dakar-Djibouti. Leiris never underwent any "initiation" into an exotic
form of life or belief. Indeed, his work (especially L'Afrique fantome) is a
relentless critique of the paradigm of initiation. His literary work, largely
devoted to a heterodox, endless autobiography, reinforces the ethnographic
point. How could Leiris presume to represent another culture, when he had
trouble enough representing himself? Such an attitude made sustained fieldwork impossible.
Griaule's energetic confidence in cultural representation could not be far
ther from Leiris' tortured, lucid uncertainty. The two positions mark off the
predicament of a post-colonial ethnography. Some authorizing fiction of "au
thentic encounter," in Geertz's phrase, seems a prerequisite for intensive re
search. But initiatory claims to speak as a knowledgeable insider revealing
essential cultural truths are no longer credible. Fieldwork cannot appear pri
marily as a cumulative process of gathering "experience,'' or of cultural
"learning" by an autonomous subject. It must rather be seen as a historically
contingent, unruly, dialogical encounter involving, to some degree, both
conflict and collaboration in the production of texts. Ethnographers seem to
be condemned to strive for true encounter, while simultaneously recognizing
the political, ethical, and personal cross-purposes that undermine any trans
153
mission of intercultural knowledge. Poised between Griaule's enactment and

Leiris' refusal of this ironic predicament, and working at the now-blurred
boundaries of ethnographic liberalism, fieldworkers struggle to improvise new
modes of authority.
They may perhaps find some retrospective encouragement in the Griaule
tradition of ethnographic cultural invention. For the story contains elements
that point beyond initiatory authority and the neo-colonial context. To date,
the most illuminating account of how research proceeded in the wake of
Ogotemmeli is Genevieve Calame-Griaule's preface to Ethnologie et langage:
La parole chez !es Dogan (1965). She tells how "the extremely precise views"
she gathered from her interlocutors led to the elaboration of "a veritable
Dagon 'theory' of speech" (11). She introduces her four key collaborators,
giving hints of their personal styles and preoccupations. We learn that one
of them, Manda, was the Dogan equivalent of a "theologian," and that he
guided the ethnographer toward the relations of speech and the person that
became the book's organizing principle. Even the book's descriptions and
interpretations of everyday behavior were the work of both ethnographer and
informants, many of the latter possessing extraordinary "finesse in observation" (14). While Calame-Griaule still makes a guarded claim to represent
an overall Dogan "cultural orientation," her preface goes a long way toward
casting the ethnographic process in specific dialogical terms. The theory of
speech that Calame-Griaule has brilliantly compiled is inescapably a collaborative work, continuing her father's productive encounter with the inhabitants of Sanga. And it is an authentic creation of "Dogan thought's need in
expressing itself for dialectic, for an exchange of questions and answers that
interpenetrate and weave themselves together" (17).
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Ehrmann, H. 1976. Comparative legal cultures. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
Fortes, M. 1973. On the concept of the person among the Tallensi. La notion de
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Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N. Y.
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Griaule, M. 1933. Introduction methodologique. Minotaure 2:7-12.
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Societe des Africanistes 45:230-32.
Leenhardt, M. 1932. Documents neo-caledoniens. Paris.
Leiris, M. 1934. L'Afrique fant6me. Paris (1981).
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Lettens, D. A. 1971. Mystagogie et mystification: Evaluation de !'oeuvre de Marcel Griaule.
Bujumbura (Burundi).
Lewis, I. 1973. The anthropologist's muse. London.
Malroux, P. 1957. Marcel Griaule. In Marcel Griaule, Conseiller de l'Union frarlfaise,
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Michel-Jones, F. 1978. Retour au Dogon: Figures du double et ambivalence. Paris.
Ogono d'Arou. 1956. Allocution prononcee au cours des funerailles de Marcel Griaule
a Sanga. Journal de la Societe des Africanistes 26:8-10.
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Richards, A. I. 1967. African systems of thought: An Anglo-French dialogue. Man
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Rivet, P., & G. H. Riviere. 1933. Mission ethnographique et linguistique DakarDjibouti. Minotaure 2:3-5.
Rouch, J. l 978a. Cine Transe. Film Quart. (Spring):2-l I.
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- - - . 1978b. Le Renard fou et le maitre pale. In Sysceme des signes: Textes reunis en
hommage d Germaine Dieterlen, 3-24. Paris.
Sarevskaja, B. 1963. La Methode de l'ethnographie de Marcel Griaule et les questions
de methodologie clans l'ethnographie fram;aise contemporaine. Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines 16:590-602.
Sperber, D. 1975. Rethinking symbolism. Cambridge, England.
LEARNING ABOUT CULTURE

Reconstruction, Participation, Administration,
1934-1954
HOMER G. BARNETT
RECONSTRUCTION
My ethnographic fieldwork began in the summer of 1934 under the guidance
of A. L. Kroeber, my teacher and curriculum advisor at the University of
California in Berkeley. The project was financed by a grant awarded to a
visiting Polish professor, Stanislaw Klimek, who proposed the use of mathematical formulas for a more precise estimate of the number and range of
native culture areas along the southern Oregon coast to the extent that they
could be determined by interviewing survivors of a decimated population,
most of whom were clustered on the Siletz reservation. Among those who
were completely dispossessed in the middle of the last century, these Indians
retained only a few relics of their indigenous culture. Although they were
able on the basis of ancestral traditions to describe with some accuracy cultural features they had never actually witnessed, acculturation and the hybridization of originally unique complexes had reduced to a minimum the
value of direct observations of an informant.
The fieldwork procedure for this program was developed in 1933 by Klimek and E. W. Gifford of the Berkeley staff (cf. Golbeck 1980). It began
Homer G. Barnett was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in 1906, and after receiving his B.A.
from Stanford, spent five years "knocking about the world" as a merchant seaman.
Undertaking graduate study at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1932, with
the intention of becoming a high school teacher, he was attracted to anthropology
and received his Ph.D. in 1938 under A. L. Kroeber. The following year he became
a member of the faculty at the University of Oregon, where he is now Professor
Emeritus of Anthropology.
157
158
HOMER
G.
BARNETI
with a review of all available documents on Oregon tribal groups to establish

an inventory of their similar and distinctive features, which were designated
traits or culture elements. Tentative lists were assembled under relevant cap
tions, such as DRESS and HUNTING, with space provided for the response of
each informant in a recognized ethnic group. Every trait and its variations
were numbered and their local presence ( + ) or absence ( - ) recorded as in
this example:
266. Moccasins
267. Women
268. Deerskin
269. Laced
270. Painted
Tolowa
Chetco
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Sixes
River
Alsea
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Using a mental record of the trait list as a guide, available informants were
asked in a casual and impromptu manner questions about their knowledge of
the particular custom being explored. Differences in opinion about traits were
not mentioned and leading questions were avoided. An informant would be
asked, for example, how his people made canoes, and if the name of a native
craftsman could be elicited, that was used as a guide and reference to substantiate vague generalizations. It was emphasized that no detail should be
neglected, and manual demonstrations and gestures were encouraged. Peripheral questions were asked to clarify uncertainties that seemed significant;
and, finally, if these efforts failed, direct questioning began. When clearly
and confidently given, volunteered information was valued above doubtful
answers obtained by rapid-fire questioning. The procedure was adhered to
consistently, except when salient features indicated that a more direct ap
proach would not alter the facts.
Although irrelevant items were gradually dropped from the original trait
list, the list was also increased in several ways. Most of the additions were
volunteered by informants through substitutions, denials, or by the refine
ment of an original trait. Frequently the elaboration consisted of an enumer
ation of attributes; sometimes it outlined a process in a precise manner; in
other instances it developed through a consideration of conceptual opposites
or alternatives, or by attention to problems of greater importance. In every
case a feature was listed as a separate element when nothing of critical im
portance or differential value could be gained by further subdivision.
The purpose of this research design was twofold. The initial phase re
159
quired the specification of the components of a culture area, with indicators

of their contexts and their relationships to each other. Since a simple state
ment of the presence or absence of a trait was meaningless without reference
to a more inclusive or collateral associate, contextualization was provided by
recording the features of a belief or behavior as they were expressed by an
informant. The result was not only a catalogue of elements, but a presenta
tion of the matrix that contributed to their meaning. The relationship be
tween traits was also essential to an understanding of processes and patterns.
In the second phase of the project, carried out under the direction of
Klimek, the numerical results of the first phase were used to calculate degrees
of cultural similarity between the nine tribal areas under investigation. Using
a mathematical formula known as Yule's Q2, a "coefficient of similarity" could
be established between any two selected tribes or areas:
C ofS =
(ad-be)
(ad+ be)
-where "a" represents the dual presence of a trait, "d" its dual absence, "b"
its presence for one group and absence for the second, and "c" its presence
for the second and absence for the first. Based upon a total of l ,832 elements
the coefficients in this survey varied from .07 to .86, depending upon geog
raphy and intercultural awareness.
Although there was never a possibility that the mathematical treatment
of field data would not be included in my final report, I could not ignore the
implications of precision inherent in the coefficient of similarity formula.
Something had been lost and something added by the translation of infor
mants' words and gestures into numbers. When I mentioned this to Kroeber
during one of our conversations he reminded me that all of us were in search
of a more scientific expression of our conviction than "American and English
lifestyles are different, but they have more in common than either has with
the Japanese." Then, without committing himself, he encouraged me to include this paragraph in my report:
The translation of diffuse, vaguely comprehended culture complexes into precise mathematical terms which can be readily manipulated has its attractions,
but it also leaves much to be desired. For one thing, the fundamental units are
not truly so, but are frequently somewhat variable and of unequal significance.
A "plus" may be, and often is, qualified by some additional statement; there
are emphatic, undeniable occurrences and occurrences in moderation or even
some of questionable certainty. Again, the arts and crafts give little difficulty,
being tangible and rigidly definable, whereas the recording of the social aspects
of any culture immediately introduces the interpretative element and inevitably embarrasses the objective quality of the testimony.
(Barnett 1937:158)
160
HOMER
G.
BARNETT
IN RETROSPECT: OREGON
Accepting my status as a student, and fieldwork as an essential requirement
for an anthropological career, I welcomed Kroeber's offer to continue the
element survey among the Gulf of Georgia Salish of Canada during the sum
mer months of 1935 and 1936. I was grateful for the opportunity to expand
my experience, not only as a personal asset, but to provide the basis for a
more professional evaluation of Yule's coefficient, in the hope of dispelling
my earlier misgivings about a mathematical treatment of informants' re
sponses. My second field trip convinced me, however, that a manipulation
of numbers can not explain the behavior of people.
A comparison of cultures by matching their traits is an acceptable tech
nique for determining degrees of similarity. But those traits cannot be pro
cessed by mathematical formula without distorting their significance. Match
ing is not measuring, and the subordinate features in a cluster of traits are
not the numerical equivalents of their foundation. Shoelaces and shoes are
not equivalent units; and laces and soles do not make a shoe. The truth is
that mathematics applies to nothing except the features of its own abstract
design. That design varies with different sets of independent and non
contradictory axioms with only one restriction: regardless of its postulates
and their possible reference to objects, every system must be logically con
sistent. As the mathematical philosopher Bertrand Russell defined it, math
ematics is "the subject in which we never know what we are talking about,
nor whether what we are saying is true." While this need not concern math
ematicians, it raises a fundamental issue in the application of their designs to
empirical data. The issue is a question: How do we count our experiences?
Since mathematics does not derive from observation, its creators have
established their own conceptual units and the relations between them. Every
unit in that domain, symbolized by "l ," is identical with every other "I," and
invariably "1 + 1 = 2." Whether that system is useful to an anthropologist,
or even relevant, depends upon whether concerned colleagues can agree upon
the definition of a unit. What is a marriage? What is creativity? Beyond that,
the essential question in the application of Yule's formula is not whether
members of both tribe A and tribe B wear moccasins, but whether moccasins
are the numerical equivalent of a victory celebration or the practice of sha
manism. Recording an invariant plus for all "elements" does not reflect the
interests or interpretations of the people surveyed. Nor does Yule's formula
permit a recording of numerical difference between a whole and its subordinate features, such as a moccasin and its artistic elaborations. All are listed
as equivalent units, though patently the features are contingent and cannot
exist independent of their foundations. Invariably coefficients and other numerical translations of thought and behavior transcend the realm of experi
161
ence and distort sensory reality in their passage through a formula. As another expert on the subject, Albert Einstein, remarked: "So far as theorems
of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality." Q.E.D.
PARTICIPATION
My hope of participating in the lifestyle of a small community was not realized until 194 7-48, when Al Murphy, a graduate student, and 1 lived for
nine months in the village of Ulimang in the Palau Islands. We were escorted
to the community by its district chief, who authorized our entry but soon
returned to Koror, the island capital established by the U.S. Navy in accordance with a recently imposed civilian code of law. The chief's departure left
us without a translator or a guide among neighbors as perplexed as we were
about what to do or say when we met on a public path or on the beach. We
had been given no grammar or ethnographic report, only an English-Palauan
word-list and brief descriptions of the pre-European cultures of Micronesia
prior to the Japanese invasion of the region.
Although our introduction by the chief was essential, it had the adverse
effect of elevating my status to that of a dignitary, and thus delayed our hope
of being accepted without prejudice or authority. Some people avoided me,
others saluted. Men bowed slightly, women glanced in another direction or
pretended to be preoccupied with something in their hands. Children were
taught to be especially considerate. When I approached their schoolgrounds
they faced me, stiffened their arms at their sides, bowed, and, regardless of
the time of day, said "Good morning, Sir." Practically everyone who passed
our house attempted to peek, and that happened often because we lived on
the path from the school to a bathing pond-where I was twice surprised by
two school boys seeking a more intimate understanding of the "Sir" to whom
they were obliged to bow their heads. My most disconcerting experience as
a stranger began when two elderly men knocked on our door and beckoned
me to follow them. They were agitated and would say no more than "Come
help, come help." I reached for Murphy's hand and followed them to a dilapidated house where they pointed to an old woman lying motionless on a
couch. I touched her hand, but withdrew immediately. My suspicion of the
men continued until I learned that I had been rechristened in transit to
Ulimang. Prior to our arrival a rumor circulated to the effect that the district
chief would be accompanied by "Doctor Somebody" on his next visit to
Ulimang.
That misfortune was my first lesson on the subject of being a Palauan;
162
HOMER
G.
BARNETT
namely, that friendship and confidence were crucial to its realization. There
with I decided to develop a more personal relationship with Kai, the owner
of the house in which Murphy and I lived. Kai agreed, but cautioned that he
would not be available for conversations-which he called "Yuk"-at any
time he was engaged in contract labor for carpentry and the manufacture of
copra and coconut oil. When I emphasized that understanding his language
was a basic requirement for friendship, he volunteered to introduce me to
Mekur, a young schoolteacher who became another good friend. In order to
promote that relationship, and to prevent interruptions by children or their
parents, we agreed that he should join me for language study in my home at
his convenience. Beginning in the late afternoon, or after dinner, our meet
ings often continued until ten o'clock. During these late night sessions, I
learned not only the Palauan language, but something about their illegal
activities-which need not be specified.
Mekur owned a Japanese-English dictionary, which had been useful as a
part of his education while the Japanese controlled the school system, and
with the arrival of the Americans he became an English teacher. Although
his hope to improve his social status by serving as a language teacher failed
with the transfer of authority, he accepted this without resentment or distrust
of Americans. He was an ambitious but not an unusual Palauan.
I soon discovered that the presence of Japanese men in Ulimang had af
fected the lifestyle of practically everyone. Then came the Americans with
another display of attractive novelties. By 194 7 that model dominated the
scene to the extent permitted by a limited income and a mail-order cata
logue. Workshop tools and kitchen utensils were no longer novelties, but the
opportunity to parade new fashions on Sundays and other American holidays
was welcome, and often inspired rivalry among those who could afford it.
Grass skirts and breech cloths had been forbidden by the Japanese, and were
no longer an issue. Ordinarily men wore khaki shorts, but on festive occa
sions they covered their bodies as much as possible with long pants, shirts,
colored glasses, military caps, and shoes ranging from tennis oxfords to slip
pers, depending upon status and pretension. Size was a secondary considera
tion, because that required an understanding of mail-order catalogue codes.
Young women dressed more gracefully. All-white ensembles consisting of shoes,
socks, and gown were the most stylish, especial~y with colored streamers fastened in rosettes on the chest like a delegate's badge. Lipstick and rouge were
fairly common, but most husbands objected to face powder because of its
arresting effect. High-heeled shoes were appealing, but most women who
could afford them preferred the balance of carrying one in each hand. Their
most consistent purpose, like that of their boy friends, was to resemble an
163
American, by choice or accident. The struggle was evident when officials

from Koror were invited to a celebration: after their departure everyone hur
ried home "to get into something comfortable."
The only traditional Palauan song-dance to survive the Anglo-Japanese
invasion was performed by older women. Standing in two lines and facing
each other, the participants lifted one heel at a time and lowered it while
pivoting their bodies through a right angle with a rolling motion of their
hips. Their song was low and mournful, its words relating the historic event
to be solemnized by the dance. The more popular song-dances derived from
a variety of sources. Some body movements-hip slapping and head tum
ing-could have been Palauan, but others were alleged to be fox trots, tan
gos, and waltzes with stilted posturing taken from Japanese drama. It was
genuine entertainment to witness the Palauan imitation of a Japanese imitat
ing an American interpreting "China Town" or "Mexicali Rose."
Soon after his self-styled "summer vacation" (a retreat for study in Octo
her), Mekur invited me to attend a meeting of his class, no doubt to exhibit
our friendship, but expressed as an appeal to assist him in the pronunciation
of English words. When I entered the classroom the students stood at atten
tion, saluted me, and sang what was intended as "The Star Spangled Banner."
The assignment for the day was to learn the English translation of a Palauan
adage, which Mekur presented to the class in its traditional rhythmic style:
Chief say, men do
Man say, women do
Women say, chil.d do.
That particular lesson lost nothing in translation. It was in fact a reliable

guide to the traditional status structure based upon wealth and sex, with
restricted degrees of authority vested in each domain. A chief discussed prob
lems with and issued orders to men only, while a husband, having paid a
bride price for his wife, assumed control of their internal and external affalra,
with the understanding that children were the responsibility of women until
sons reached maturity, when that obligation was transferred to fathers.
Palauans lived in a man's world for which they gave women credit. The
foundation for this salute to motherhood was the traditional requirement that
all inherited privileges and responsibilities were transmitted through mater
nal lineages. These privileges included not only wealth but domains of ac
tion. Two levels of leadership and two classes of titles were conferred on men
accepted as chiefs. One class acknowledged authority only within a clan, the
other within a community, whether that domain consisted of a village, a
district, or a regional combination of districts. Only leaders with regional
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qualifications were accorded the title of rupak in recognition of their distinction as political leaders and as judges of the conduct of their subordinates.
Prior to their constraint by foreign authorities, rupaks had assumed complete responsibility and dictatorial power, including the right to requisition
food, to impose fines on members of their village or district, to declare rules
of conduct and personally judge offenders, and to conscript service for their
own benefit and that of the community. Because they were priests as well as
secular leaders, rupaks assumed supernatural power to sanction their preemptory decrees. They expected to be informed of any unusual event within their
jurisdiction, and did not hesitate to summon a person to give an account of
his intentions or behavior. They were present at all public and important
family affairs, acting as advisors and recorders. In addition to the powers
accorded to rupaks, titled men of all degrees were granted gestures of respect.
No common person would confront them. Their inferiors stepped off a trail
and bowed as they passed, addressing them in a subdued tone. Although all
these acknowledgments of high rank were repressed by foreign intervention,
an entitled chief in 194 7 still evoked respect, because titles themselves were
venerated. Their acquisition was an inspiration and often initiated a remarkable transformation in the behavior of men who inherited them.
When Mekur explained to his class the meaning of "Man say, women do"
he did not mention the relationship conveyed by the common expression
"Women are strong, men are weak." His neglect was deliberate, because that
lyric was a tribute often used by husbands to excuse their mistakes and encourage compassion by their wives. Men were generous in their acknowledgment of a woman's importance, to the extent that it did not alter the fundamental reality of male dominance. They claimed for their wives, and allowed
them to claim for themselves, important privileges within the limits of female
moderation. With that understanding their magnanimity was genuine. They
wanted to believe what they said about women, and encouraged their wives
to concur, especially when praising them in the presence of an American.
Men and women accepted their difference in status, but their display of mutual support has at times misled sympathetic but unwary foreigners into believing that the Palauans lived in a matriarchal system administered by respected, kindly, elderly women.
Mekur was even more circumspect when he taught members of his class
to repeat "Women say, child do," because his efforts as a teacher could be
misunderstood as a violation of that rule. Actually, this expression was also
more of a tribute to a matrilineal heritage than a statement of fact, though it
did influence the training of children from infancy to adolescence. Traditionally, not only mothers but any female surrogate nourished and disciplined
boys as well as girls in a household. They provided all of the necessary care
165
and protection, and were also expected to punish their wards by any suitable
means, from neglect, to fright, to a slap on the face.
Men financed their children's physical needs and thereby maintained con
trol over their future; but except for that investment, child care for them was
a pastime, not an obligation. They monitored toddlers while wives worked
in taro patches when no older sister was available, or during that part of the
day when girls were in school. But none of this was man's work. Feeding,
bathing, pacifying, loving-these were for women. The male attitude re
sembled that of a zoo visitor: although a young animal evokes yearning and
compassion, it is not the spectator's responsibility.
My knowledge of family affairs derived from both planned and casual con
tacts with neighbors. Accepting the reciprocal roles of guest and host pro
vided the opportunity to witness behaviors that were seldom described. The
following examples have been abstracted from my informal journal of daily
events.
December 25. Kai arrived for dinner earlier than expected. He was all dressed
up with his hair plaster~d to his head with coconut oil. He had promised to
make noodles, another proud accomplishment which he had learned from the
Japanese. Instead, Rdor, his brother-in-law from across the path, brought his
style of noodles. Kai and I killed and plucked a chicken; Rdor cleaned it. The
three of us sat on the floor inventing jokes of any kind that we could think of
while Murphy prepared our dinner. We were ready to eat by 3:00, but Kai's
wife Emei had not appeared. When I asked about her he replied that she was
working in her taro field. Even with that signal it did not occur to me that she
was not to eat with us until I remembered my unexpected visit last Saturday
when I wanted to ask Kai a question and arrived before dinner. I was invited
to join him, and when I nodded in acceptance Emei and their two children
left us and ate in another room. I knew that families do not eat together when
a guest is present, but I thought that after four months of daily "hellos" we
were friends.
January I. Kai and Rdor prepared dinner for Murphy and me, then brought
it to our house. When we sat down they threw up a coconut leaf screen to hide
all of us from the view of passers-by, the reason for the secrecy being, I guessed,
that they did not wane to be seen eating with us-until they began pouring
drinks of rum to celebrate the occasion. After joking for 30 minutes Rdor made
gestures urging me to eat. I saluted Murphy and we ate our dinner; but they
did not. They left immediately. I was disconcerted, then disgusted when I
learned that they lost no time eating the remains of the food which they took
with them to Kai's house. There was nothing hostile in their behavior, and I
learned another lesson: record and forget it!
(cf. Barnett 1970a:l7-18)
In March Murphy and I were invited to attend a three-day celebration, a
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HOMER
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kledaol, on another island to honor and encourage its rehabilitation after a

severe storm. Accompanied by the local chief we witnessed displays of Palauan talent in skits which they called shibais in imitation of the Japanese.
Both men and women staged them but not in a mixed company. Mostly
satires lampooning a well-known person or ridiculing a custom, these pantomimes were accompanied by songs and exaggerated posturing, with the
ubiquitous hip wiggle slipped into the plot. In-character dress was not an
ideal; oddity of fit or combination attracted more attention. Actors portraying Palauan men wore shorts with loin cloths stretched over them; men playing the part of women exaggerated sexual characteristics; those cast as Japanese soldiers wore every available kind and combination of uniform, with
wood saws cast as swords and bamboo poles as guns.
An episode in the life of a peeping tom induced the most raucous laughter.
The girl's role was portrayed by a boy wearing a padded blouse and a cloth
over his head. Skipping "her" way to a bathing pool with soiled clothes over
her arm, "she" was followed by a man who concealed his face behind a few
leaves while she washed the clothes and herself, wiggling her hips as she
hummed a tune. When she detected the man behind the leaves she screamed,
and the culprit was taken to an American police sergeant. The result was a
caricature of American law in action. The few words of English known to
the stem-faced sergeant emerged from an otherwise unintelligible mumble,
punctuated by peremptory gestures. Confusion and mistaken accusations
dominated the scene for five minutes; but finally the case was closed with a
ten-year jail sentence.
That was the end of the kledaol and of our odyssey. The chief who escorted
us was friendly and responsive to our suggestions. He also introduced us to
local leaders and attempted to promote conversations with them. No doubt
one of the reasons for his cordiality was the hope that it would be mentioned
in our comments to other chiefs and to American officials in Koror. It also
occurred to me that he regarded us as an exhibit of the degree to which
itinerant Americans can be naturalized.
IN RETROSPECT: PALAU
My Palauan experience shifted my fieldwork interest from the North American Indians to indigenous populations in the Pacific area. It also revived a
latent interest in culture change, with a concern for innovative processes
rather than the histories of their products. That interest was immediately
aroused by the Palauan reception of Japanese and American custom. Their
imitations of dress style, songs, and dances were more than copies of foreign
Homer Barnett with a neighbor's son, on Palau.
models, and many re-creational deviations were deliberately innovative. So

were their push carts for carrying supplies and trash, old rubber tires for protecting row boats at landing piers, and the coconut oil machine which Kai
assembled from the remains of a gasoline engine. In fact, by 194 7 the acceptance of the odds and ends of foreign technology and discipline had altered the daily and weekly rhythm of work and play in Ulimang, but it did
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HOMER
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not suppress local ingenuity upon any occasion. My friendship with Kai and
other creative individuals encouraged curiosity about how a cultural change
is initiated. For a culture historian, such as Kroeber, who wrote and lectured
extensively on "culture growth," it was sufficient to describe the features of a
specified period, such as the Industrial Revolution, and trace their local or
foreign origins and consequences. My interest in cultural change, activated
by observing Palauan responses to alien influences, concentrated upon the
processes (such as analysis and recombination) whereby change is accom
plished. The psychological and individualized approach that I adopted in
Innovation was without question inspired in part by my familiarity with the
antics of shibai and peeping tom celebrities (Barnett 1953; cf 1940, 1942).
My Palauan experience also corrected the textbook image of a "primitive"
society, which had to some extent been sustained by my Oregon work. My
Palauan friends and critics were much more than clusters of culture traits.
They were human beings, neither vicious nor dangerous, retarded nor sullen,
no more or no less perfect than Americans. Their children were admonished
to follow the models of honesty and generosity established by paragons in a
heroic age. Despite that training, my Palauan friends frequently revealed
their own genre of American selfishness, deception, and obsequious pre
tense-all with the familiar exoneration that "nobody is perfect."
I also learned about Palauan humor, which, like our own, was both strat
ified and brutal. Children bantered and teased their mothers, but that indul
gence was short, and they were soon slapped and ordered to join play groups
that enforced their own rules of behavior. Men joked with each other, using
expressions that were vulgar and not suitable in the presence of women and
children, who were an everlasting source of manufactured stupidity created
by men in private competition. Wives reciprocated more quietly and with a
pretense of being ladies. Although I never joined them, I often witnessed a
group of two or three women laughing while one mimicked the swagger of a
pretentious man or the scowl of an irate father. Children and adults alike
ridiculed physical defects and ineptitude. A young man named Alsat was a
frequent target for their jesting. Appearing on the scene in blue shorts, boots,
and a junior navy officer's cap the day Murphy and I arrived in Ulimang, he
asked in an authoritative manner what our luggage contained. The boy who
carried our suitcase laughed and offered him the job. Alsat refused and snarled
at me when I smiled. Our other helpers laughed when one of them said "He
crazy." After persistently annoying us for several weeks, he marched directly
to me one day while we were seated on a bench in the schoolgrounds. He
grabbed my feet, abruptly looked at the soles of my shoes, then shouted,
accusing me of doing something wrong, which he did not specify. We laughed
as he marched to the school building to inform the attendant of my "crime."
169
Later the attendant joined us to apologize, explaining that the man's conception of himself as an officer was due to the stress of privation during the war.
The loss of relatives and the shock of bombs and gunfire had apparently
disturbed his contact with reality. He developed a mild megalomania and
periodically imagined that he was a Japanese security officer. That resolved
my dilemma about how to confront the "Crazy One." Recalling that I had
seen many Americans laughing at misery and injustice, I never laughed at
him again for the sake of being a Palauan (Barnett l 970b:93-94, 103-4).
This perspective is not a plea for compassion, but an illustration of my
conviction that fieldwork is one of the most effective means of understanding
one's self. Sharing a different lifestyle has a mirror effect, providing glimpses
of an observer's foibles as well as his dignity. I am grateful to the Palauan
people for their contribution to my professional career.
ADMINISTRATION
I have chosen to submit the report that follows for two reasons. It differs from
RECONSTRUCTION and PARTICIPATION in that I monitored the fieldwork of
other anthropologists; and the project that it delineates raised fundamental
questions about the future of anthropology as a science of human behavior.
The program began in 1951 with the employment of anthropologists to
assist in the administration of Micronesians who were under the jurisdiction
of the United States (see Barnett 1956:86-101 for background details). At
that time seven anthropologists held civil service positions with the governing agency, the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, one being associated
with each of the six regional divisions of the area and myself with the Headquarters Staff of the Commissioner of the Territory. All of us had been employed in accordance with a so-called job description-an anonymously authored document serving as our professional charter. It permitted an extensive
freedom of activity with respect to our research, advice, and program evaluation. Positively phrased, it was so inclusive in its implications that no generally understood boundary existed between the duties of the anthropologists
and other personnel concerned with the same problems. A more objectionable feature of the situation, as it was viewed in 1951, was the anthropologist's involvement in policy formation at both Headquarters and District levels. That often resulted in differences of opinion as to what was desirable for
the Micronesians, with the views of the anthropologist-avowedly the specialist on human behavior-in jeopardy.
In order to eliminate that source of confusion, as well as to designate an
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arena for the anthropologist's scientific contribution, it was decided by the

Headquarters Staff to restrict the anthropologist's participation in policy decisions to the submission of information for which he could provide evidence, and to relieve him of any obligation to implement a decision. He was
to be treated not as an administrative officer, but as a technical specialist who
accepted research assignments and referred decisions to his executive associates. His own efforts were to be confined to social, economic, and other
analyses that would enable them to assess the consequences of their previous
decisions for future action.
This generalized statement of the anthropologist's role was particularized,
and a rationale offered for its premises and safeguards, in a memorandum
approved by the seven anthropologists and issued by the commissioner in
1952. The following is a concise summation of that document:
l. Since anthropologists will be involved with the collection of information
about, and maintaining an intimate knowledge of, the indigenous cultures
of the area, they should be in a position to contribute to effective administration in three respects:
a) Advising on the implementation of educational, economic, judicial, and other departmental projects, and on the solution of
problems arising from such implementation;
b) Evaluating the success of specified programs with reference to their
objectives;
c) Independently formulating and implementing research of theoretical interest to the anthropological profession and/or of practical
importance to the administration.
2. An anthropologist must maintain, insofar as possible, a neutral position
with respect to administrative policy and action. Anything which tends to
identify him as a governmental official invested with the power to enforce
his convictions detracts from his usefulness as a source of unbiased information, because it jeopardizes confidential relationships with his informants and frequently involves him in factional struggles.
3. It is desirable that anthropologists be accorded the freedom and the facilities to interview informants under the most favorable conditions. It is expected that at times information will be given in confidence; and allowance
should be made for this possibility in local housing and office arrangements
whenever possible.
4. It is evident that an anthropologist's familiarity with, and his acceptance
by, the Micronesians of this District provide him with information not otherwise obtainable. From both an ethical and a practical standpoint, he is
obligated to preserve confidence.
(Barnett 1956: 102)
While the announced purpose of this plan was to promote more effective
171
cooperation between administrators and anthropologists, its significance was

more comprehensive. Based upon the conviction that anthropology was or
could become an applied science, it entailed the premise that a science could
demonstrate means but could not specify ends. The anthropologist must
therefore confine himself to statements of fact and probability, referring to
the administrator the responsibility for making policy decisions based upon
those facts and probabilities.
These determinants of the role of anthropology in administration, which
were not widely accepted as guides to action by anthropologists or other
social scientists, were derived by analogy from the characteristics of the ap
plied physical sciences. Since the validity of the analogy may be debatable,
and could raise questions of truth or necessity, it may be well to elaborate
upon them. With reference to the possibility of a scientific application of
anthropological data, it must be admitted that the research and constructs of
academic anthropology are rather sterile for this purpose. Theoretical science
of any kind can rarely be translated directly into practice. It must be adapted,
and in many instances modified to accommodate empirically derived con
cepts. Beyond that, applied science must develop its own insights and methods. This is especially true of applied social science, because its primary concern is with change, whereas theoretical sociology and anthropology deal
with structures that are inherently static-even though one structure is sup
posed to flow into or become another. Serious attention to the results of
empirical studies of change cannot fail to reveal that much has been learned,
or can be learned, about dynamic regularities in human behavior. It is not
pretentious to assert that we are often in a position to predict and control
such changes, granted the ordinary limitations imposed upon an applied science: namely, the demands for rigor in analysis, attention to specificity, stipu
lation of conditions, and conclusions stated as probabilities.
There is another reason for the valid objection that traditional anthropology offers little insight into practical problems, and it is intimately related
to the first. Despite an expressed appreciation of psychology and psychiatry,
anthropology has not incorporated their insights into its contribution to the
study of man. It satisfies itself with abstract forms and hypostatized forces
rather than with human beings and their motivations. Presumably, academic
anthropology can operate with this separation of man from his incentives;
but my Palauan experience taught me that the student of change, observing
people creating and reacting to novelties, cannot rest satisfied with the sepa
ration. Human behavior is a socio-psychological phenomenon, to the understanding of which psychology has quite as much to offer as does anthropology.
A conjunction of these disciplines, and others, to form a social instead of a
departmental science, offers considerable promise for the future.
There seems to be no reason in principle for assuming that a human being
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HOMER
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is more difficult to understand or control than is an atom. In all science,

including that of all "things" social, it is the prediction of causes, not effects,
that is precarious. Under natural conditions-that is, conditions not exter
nally manipulated-the conjunction of events necessary and sufficient to
produce another event has such a complex of antecedents that it is rarely
possible to do more than state that it is likely to occur. For this reason, in
anthropology, as in physics, a prediction is properly phrased in the condi
tional tense: if A happens, then B will probably follow.
Anthropological forecasting in the Trust Territory was not pretentious,
and when not required as a written record it was offered as a guess or a
supposition. It was offered with the conviction that any rational guide to
action was better than one based upon ignorance or preconception. It was
replete with qualifications: a particular sequence coul.d occur or might occur;
it is more or less likely, possible, or expectable. The reasoning that produced
such projections was by analogy with what was known to have happened
elsewhere, or at another time among the same people, under comparable
conditions. Sometimes the result was nothing more than an objectively organized compilation of common sense; but even that can be valuable in an
emotionally charged atmosphere.
IN RETROSPECT: MICRONESIA
Like any other human endeavor, scientific activity is governed by a set of
values. Personally, a scientist is supposed to be open-minded, cautious, and
detached. Whether he is right is less important than whether his methodology
is appropriate to its purpose; that is, whether it answers the questions asked
in a manner which can be verified by others. Adherence to such values is the
result of choice. It is opposed, for example, to reliance upon doctrine or
intuition; and it is a preference that cannot be supported by a resort to sci
entific methods. It is true that values can be studied scientifically; so can
science itself. In either case, however, the method operates under the dic
tates of a supraordinate value system representing ends which can be ac
cepted or rejectt:d-by appeal to other values-but which cannot be exhibited as true or false.
The purpose of any science is arbitrary, and cannot be the subject of its
inquiry. Neither can it justify other goals or procedures except by granting
the values that direct them. It may rate, grade, and evaluate alternatives and
preferences, accepting the ends they seek as giveu; but it cannot evaluate
those ends except by reference to other goals accepted as given. In brief,
science is concerned with means and not ends; but neither ends nor means
173
are absolutes. That which is an end in one value context may become a
means or an instrument in another. There are scientific means to save human
lives, but no scientific justification for doing so-unless we can demonstrate
that they are the means to some other granted purpose, such as happiness,
which may in tum be demonstrated to be a means to achieve social unity or
another unquestioned value. Just as the suitability of means to relative ends
can therefore be demonstrated, so can the wisdom of choice between alternative means; but again, only under the jurisdiction of an extrinsic criterion
operating as a value. There are extravagant as well as inexpensive means to
save a life, healthful as well as unhealthy avenues to happiness.
In brief, science can ascertain properties but it cannot discover or adjudicate their virtues. It can rate values in terms of stated criteria, not in terms
of their desirability. Its discoveries and creations cannot be translated into
good and evil. Translation requires the imposition of a scale of moral values,
the validity of which may be debated, but without proof. In Kant's terms,
science deals with hypothetical, not categorical, imperatives.
The allocation of policy to the Trust Territory adminstrator was part of the
decision not only to establish effective collaboration with anthropologists,
but to ensure a division of function based upon competence and acknowledged responsibility. The administrator, by the terms of his employment, was
expected to render decisions concerning Micronesian welfare, and to assume
responsibility for their consequences. Since there could be no scientific determination of the ends to be accomplished, it followed that the anthropologist, acting as a scientist, was not professionally qualified to define the purposes of the United States government. It may be argued that the administrator
was not qualified either, but that is a matter of opinion, and cannot be demonstrated except, again, on certain value assumptions. In any event, the
argument would not qualify an anthropologist, because it does not follow
that those who know a people best know what is best for them.
This division of function did not preclude expressions of opinion or value
judgments by Trust Territory anthropologists. In fact, I was often urged to
state my opinion, and probably should have referred questions to my associates more often than I did (e.g., when they involved economic policy). In
any event, all of us at Staff Headquarters were expected to state when and
why we were expressing a prejudice or a preference. Contrary to the contention sometimes voiced by social scientists, this obligation did not require a
schizophrenic personality, any more than does the pressure on a man to behave as both a father and a physicist, or both a biologist and a Democrat. It
does ask that men claim no more distinction for their preferences than they
are entitled to as social philosophers.
This leads to a more serious question that will not have escaped the reader:
namely, do we want a rigorous science of human behavior? And if so, are we
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BARNE'IT
prepared to deal with its consequences? We share this dilemma with the
physicists, but are more deeply involved; for we propose to understand and
thereby to provide a basis for the human direction of human affairs. That
decision weighs heavily because science, any science, and its applications are
neutral instruments; and they can operate for the good or ill of mankind,
depending upon the value system of the man who assumes that responsibility.
REFERENCES CITED
Barnett, H. 1937. Cultural element distributions: VII. Oregon coast. U. Cal. Anth.
Records 1:117-32.
- - - . 1940. Cultural processes. Am. Anth. 42:38-42.
- - - . 1942. Invention and cultural change. Am. Anth. 44:14-30.
- - - . 1953. Innovation: The basis of cultural change. New York.
- - - . 1956. Anthropology in administration. Evanston.
- - - . 1970a. Palauan journal. In Being an anthropologist: Fieldwork in eleven cultum,
ed. G. Spindler, 1-31. New York.
- - - . 1970b. Being a Palauan (Fieldwork Edition). New York.
Golbeck, A. 1980. Quantification in ethnology and its appearance in regional culture
trait distribution studies (1888 to 1939).]. Hist. Behav. Scis. 16:228-40.
FOLLOWING DEACON
The Problem of Ethnographic
Reanalysis, 1926-1981
JOAN LARCOM
While not familiar to many anthropologists, Bernard Deacon (1903-27) is

better known to those interested in kinship studies. Just before his tragic
death in the New Hebrides {Vanuatu), where he was completing over a year
of productive field research, Deacon made his most memorable anthropological contribution, the discovery of a six-class marriage system on the island of
Ambrym. Deciphering this marriage system was hailed as a brilliant achievement, ample testimony to the promise of an exceptional fieldworker; it occupies a prominent place in a recent review of W. H. R. Rivers and the
growth of the "Cambridge School" in British anthropology {Langham 1981).
Deacon's work on Ambrym has been subjected to reanalysis, and its significance is still being debated {Lane 1958; Patterson 1976; Scheffler 1970).
This paper, however, offers a different assessment of his work from the singular perspective of an ethnographer who succeeded him in his field site.
Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, I found myself following Deacon to South West Bay, Malekula, in the New Hebrides. Working in a place
where he had also worked brought home to me the central and ambiguous
role of precursors in the practice of ethnography.
This paper, then, is a reflection on predecessors, those anthropological
ghosts or living beings that have preceded us to our field sites, our "ancestors"
in a particular ethnographic sense. Their numbers are many: Malinowski's
Joan Larcom is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Mount Holyoke College. Her doctoral dissertation (Stanford University, 1980)
was based on field research among the Mewun of Malekula, Vanuatu. She currently
has a grant to return to Vanuatu to work on the interplay of localism and nationalism.
175
176
)OAN LARCOM
voice influences the several that have followed him to the Trobriands, and
no one who has worked in the New Guinea Sepik can ignore the shadow of
Gregory Bateson. In the 1920s and 1930s anthropologists could think of
themselves as explorers, moving into virgin territory. This is no longer the
case. The days have passed when professors were able to cordon off unworked
and potentially excellent research locales for their favored students. 1 The
ethnographic field has become crowded, with few sites left for unprecedented
study. Most ethnographers find themselves with precursors in the field; it is
this overlap-the dilemmas and opportunities it creates-that has shaped
this paper. A small tribute to a gifted ethnographer, my reflections are offered
from the standpoint of a successor and reinterpreter of Deacon, for whom his
legacy has come to appear as a complex element in a continuing work.
"A. B. DEACON, ANTHROPOLOGIST"

Deacon was trained in anthropology at Cambridge just after the death of
W. H. R. Rivers in 1922, before the reorienting influence of Malinowski and

Radcliffe-Brown had been strongly felt in British anthropology. For him, the
most pertinent anthropological influences were still those of Rivers' follow
ers, who were then divided into two theoretical camps. Proponents of kin
ship studies, including Deacon's Cambridge mentor W. E. Armstrong, were
concerned with social organization approached through the "genealogical
method." In contrast, the "hyper-diffusionists" (Grafton Elliot Smith and
William Perry) pushed Rivers' "historical" interests to far-fetched extremes,
interpreting all human history in terms of the transmission of ancient Egyp
tian culture to other parts of the world (Langham 198l:passim). Each of
these intellectual factions was to claim Deacon as their scion.
Deacon's own combination of social structural and historical interests,
however, was characteristically Riversian. In a letter to A. C. Haddon writ
ten from the field, he affirmed himself "a disciple of Rivers (early Rivers)
more than of any other ethnologist in so far as I have any theories at all"
I. This professorial power was evident at the time of Deacon's fieldwork in a letter Radcliffe
Brown wrote to Haddon shortly after Deacon's death: "I am grateful for the information you gave
me about Firth and Fortune. It is singular that you should feel exactly as I feel about Fortune's
desire to work in Tikopia. The Australian National Research Council has provisionally agreed
to give him a grant for a year's work, but I have told them that it seems desirable for me that
Fortune should work not in Tikopia, but in some other region, and it is left in my power to settle
this.... Since Hogbin has gone to Rennell Island I feel that it might perhaps be a good thing
to let Firth have Tikopia, if he likes, since this is one of the best fields for anthropological work
still left in the Pacific .... (ACHP: ARB/ACH 1927).
FOLLOWING DEACON
177
(ACHP: ABO/ ACH n.d. ). Like Rivers, he considered social structure fundamental to ethnological analysis (Deacon 1934:698). In this he reflected
the influence of Armstrong, whose lectures and evening conversation classes
seem to have had great impact. Deacon praised Armstrong as a "confirmed
logician" (Deacon 1934:xiv), and he, too, was absorbed by the fascinating
logic of kinship systems. In his field notes, he frequently used Armstrong's
idiosyncratic circular notation system for recording social organization, and
corresponded regularly with his tutor about his social organizational discoveries.
But like the Rivers of the History of Melanesian Society ( 1914), Deacon
also saw the study of kinship systems, their historical roots, and the processes
of their transformation as the means to work out a grand diffusionist scheme
of Pacific cultures. As an undergraduate, Deacon had written a paper correlating ghost societies and initiation cults of New Guinea with one another
and with those of the Kakihan of Ceram in Indonesia. This earned him the
attention of Elliot Smith, who avowed high hopes for Deacon's future in
anthropology, and who later found his fieldwork "a wonderful corroboration
of our recent [diffusionist) work" (Langham 1981 :240).
Yet Deacon himself was never a diffusionist extremist. Later, considering
an expansion of his Kakihan paper, he puzzled over the occurrence of similar
ghost cults and initiation rites found in widely separated places. The difficulties of hyper-diffusionism continued to disturb him during his long voyage to
the New Hebrides in the fall of 1925. Taking as an example the instance of
ghost societies in Tierra del Fuego and their resemblance to those he had
already described, he worried the explanatory issues of evolution and transmission (diffusion) in a letter posted from Colombo to Armstrong:
What do you make of the whole thing? It seems to me to be remarkably similar
to the sort of thing that goes on in parts of New Guinea .... What does it
mean? Ought the psychoanalysts to tackle it? I wish I could make up my mind
about "convergences" of this kind. Are you to leave things to the "comfortable
doctrine" of evolution? Transmission and evolution seem equally difficult.
(Langham 1981:216)
Deacon remained sharply critical of the diffusionist methodology, at the same

time that he remainc.d loyal to diffusionism's historical approach (ABDP:
ABO/MG n.d. ). While on Malekula, he wrote that one of his goals was to
contribute to a compendium of cultural distributions-a collected "cyclopedia of distributions" that could be used to check theories such as those of
Elliot Smith and Perry, which tended to "slur over gaps" and thus "distort the
actual complexity" (ABDP: ABO/MG n.d.). He saw himself, in short, as a
man between the "two extremes" of "Malinowski and Smith-Perry" (ACHP:
ABD/ACH n.d.).
178
)OAN LARCOM
After spending his days on shipboard studying Biblical texts written in the
South West Bay dialects, Deacon arrived in Malekula in mid-January 1926.
His subsequent stay was divided between three different locations-South
West Bay, Lambumbu, and Ambrym {an island off the northeast coast of
Malekula)-trying to discern the precise connections and paths of diffusion
for various cultural phenomena. His linguistic talents {he had grown up in
Russia) enabled him to learn all three dialects well enough to do most of his
research through them. A skilled and tactful fieldworker who cross-checked
the veracity of his informants thoroughly, he managed to assimilate a tremen
dous amount of information during his five months at South West Bay. His
fieldwork garnered not only detailed descriptions of several kinship systems,
but also careful records about varieties of ceremonial life, magic, vernacular
texts, and photographs. In a milieu where tensions between pagan and mis
sion, Melanesian and colonist, English and French, Catholic and Protestant,
were high, Deacon won the affection and respect of both Melanesians and
European settlers.
After fourteen months in the New Hebrides, Deacon packed up his arti
facts and notes and was about to depart for Australia, where his already bruited
discovery of the six-class marriage system on Ambrym had smoothed the way
for him to take up a lectureship at the University of Sydney during the temporary absence of Radcliffe-Brown. In Haddon's words, "[Deacon] was just
entering into the life for which he was so well prepared and for which his
friends confidently anticipated a brilliant success ... "{Deacon 1934:xxvii).
But on the eve of his departure in early March 192 7, Deacon took ill with
blackwater fever {or malignant malaria). He died within a week, two months
after his twenty-fourth birthday.
The very day I arrived in South West Bay, nearly fifty years after Deacon's
death, a group of people took me up to a hillside overlooking the Pacific.
There, alongside a colorfully leaved croton bush, was a concrete memorial
slab inscribed with the words, "A. B. Deacon, Anthropologist."
THE ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE

Deacon's presence in my field site was to have a strong effect on my own
ethnographic writing. But at first I was dismayed to find him there. My disappointment may be explained by certain assumptions about originality that
influenced me before I had to confront the problem of ethnographic reanalysis.
My college background had been in literary criticism, an interest I abandoned for anthropology. What had offended me about my concentration in
FoLWWING DEACON
179
English was not the concern with literary works themselves but a growing
emphasis, as I advanced toward graduation, on literary criticism. Original
literary creations seemed smothered by massive accumulations of second-hand
commentaries. One could never start fresh. I was, moreover, oppressed by a
problem more recently addressed by Walter Jackson Bate in The Burden of the
Past and the English Poet. Writing on the part earlier writers played in the
work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors, Bate quotes Samuel
Johnson on his predecessors: "It is, indeed, always dangerous to be placed in
a state of unavoidable comparison with excellence, and the danger is still
greater when that excellence is consecrated by death ... " (Bate 1970:3).
Jeopardy of comparison has led many, then, to an "anxiety of influence"
(Bloom 1973), a fear of the predecessor. Comparison and anxiety in tum rest
on the question, essential for the neoclassical and romantic writers and now
increasingly significant for anthropologists: "What is there left to do?" (Bate
1970:3). The apparent virginity of anthropological research attracted methe possibility of being one's own authority, of moving into really new material. With hopes for exotic freshness, I went on to graduate school prepared
for the pristine.
I brought there with me an old interest in the Chamula Indians, Tzotzilspeaking Maya residents in the Chia pas highlands of Mexico. This attraction
carried me through a summer of fieldwork in Chamula under the auspices of
Stanford's fieldwork program, part of preparation for the master's degree. When
I wrote my master's thesis on this Indian municipio, I was able to skirt several
earlier papers by students working in the highlands with the Harvard Chiapas
program. Thus the problem of predecessors did not emerge again until I was
preparing my Ph.D. research proposal. My qualifying exams, oriented towards Mesoamerica, were successfully completed, and I turned my attention
to the literature on Chamula. Finding myself wading through volumes of
material by Mexican and, in particular, Harvard researchers, I began to reconsider my plans. I did not relish tiptoeing through a field already mined by
many other anthropologists, each a potential detonator for my own proposal.
Consulting a well-travelled fellow student, I asked him, half joking, if he
knew of an area untouched by anthropologists. He replied that he did indeed
know of one-the southern highlands of Malekula-and added that it was
unstudied for a very good reason: it was the worst field site he had ever seen.
Malekula's rainy season, lasting about half the year, makes its steep mountainous interior particularly inaccessible. The generally sultry climate and a
surfeit of insect-born diseases add to the difficulties of ethnographic work.
Beginning to research this Melanesian area immediately, I found that several researchers had done some work on the coasts, most of it completed over
fifty years before. But there was a group living in the southern Malekulan
highlands, still wearing grass skirts and penis wrappers, who were as yet little
180
]OAN LARCOM
Joan Larcom with informants in Southwest Bay, Malekula, Vanuatu. Courtesy Ann SkinnerJones.
studied anthropologically (Muller 1972). It was perfect, although a bit intim

idating. I was particularly interested in a south Malekulan women's ranked
society known as the nimangi, and I prepared to study this political group to
learn its ramifications in women's status among themselves and also in relation to men. Six months after I first read about the women's nimangi, I was
in the Malekulan highlands, after fording innumerable streams on the uphill
climb.
As I perhaps should have anticipated, the site proved unworkable for me.
I had my young daughter with me on the trip, and the highlands site seemed
too formidable; when the rains began in earnest shortly after my arrival, the
fords of streams and rivers became impassable rushing torrents. The prospect
of both of us being totally isolated there for a much long;!r period than I had
FOLLOWING DEACON
181
expected, with health and other hazards, persuaded me to relocate in a more

accessible area on the Malekulan coast of South West Bay in an area known
as Mewun.
The five hundred or so residents of Mewun now live in four coastal villages, easily reached by government and church personnel, as well as trade
ships that purchase cash crops. This demographic pattern, though, represents
a steady relocation over the past eighty years, as Mewun have left smaller
hilltop villages further inland and moved to coastal mission villages. This
migration, which was synonymous with conversion to Presbyterianism, began in the late nineteenth century and was finally completed in 1972, when
the last "pagan" bachelor joined the church and a mission village. Although
missionized Mewun retains certain aspects of its traditional economy (its strong
agricultural basis, and its tangential relation to cash cropping}, social life
appears to have been very much altered by mission influence. For example,
formerly important institutions such as the men's club houses, bridewealth,
and polygyny-as well as the nimangi-are forbidden in mission villages.
Once in South West Bay, I changed the focus of my research to explore the
effects of missionization on Mewun people.
But with my arrival there, the problem of the predecessor loomed again.
As I stood ambivalent before Deacon's grave on my first day there, I reshouldered the "burden of the anthropological past." I was following somebody
both excellent and dead.
REINTERPRETATION: PUTTING KINSHIP

IN ITS PLACE
How did I use Deacon during the fieldwork period? I had read his book Makkula
(1934) before going to the New Hebrides. But when I found myself living on
his very field site, I had a copy of the book sent to me. To a certain extent,
the book directed my questions about the changes wrought by missionaries
and other types of contact. But much of Deacon's description seemed outdated, alien, and of little interest. Of what use were magical formulas to
cause impotence in an enemy, or detailed rhythmic notations of former drumsignalling, now forgotten?2
Because the Mewun I was observing seemed so thoroughly missionized and
2. Since the New Hebrides received its independence from the colonial governments (the
United Kingdom and France) on July 31, 1980 (when the name of the new nation was changed
to Vanuatu), Mewun interest in drum-signalling has revived, and the signals themselves are now
significant markers of group membership (Larcom 1982).
182
JOAN LARCOM
changed, Deacon's book seemed at best useful as an approximate base line

record of what had been lost. Its subtitle was, after all, A Vanishing People in
the New Hebrides. It was only later, while I was drafting some preliminary
chapters of my dissertation after reading through many of Deacon's notes and
letters in Cambridge and London, that his contribution to my understanding
of the Mewun became clear. Gradually, with distance from the immediacies
of the field, the similarities between what he perceived and what I saw a half
century later became apparent.
While the behavior that each of us had recorded in fieldnotes was super
ficially very different (different dress styles, different work patterns, different
living arrangements, different religious life), I began to see certain central
concerns common to the Mewun, whether his informants in 1926 or mine
in 1974. For lack of a more apt word I have called this complex of concerns
an ideology. Getting closer to Melanesians' experience, it could perhaps equally
well be called a socio-mythic landscape, or a set of persistent, spatialized
structural principles. Let me describe this complex very briefly but concretely,
using material that the two of us assembled.
In his notes, Deacon recorded details of a ceremony performed in a par
ticularly sacred spot, the central place for a group of Mewun people. This
ceremony, called "The Making of Man," was performed periodically to ensure
the fertility of the place's inhabitants and to ward off sickness and death for
all the Mewun. During it, the elders of the group broke ordinary incest taboos
by having sexual intercourse with their closest female relatives. The principle
concern of the ceremony, as expressed to Deacon, was the protection and
bolstering of fertility.
At the time this ceremony was performed, the Mewun had good reason to
be alarmed about fertility. Aside from the shortage of women that may have
resulted from their practice of female infanticide, depopulation from intro
duced disease was a particular threat to the entire place and its inhabitants
during the early decades of this century. The concern with fertility expressed
by the ceremony Deacon recorded apparently permeated much of the early
contact pagan Mewun society, and it remained an important issue for the
Mewun during my field stay.
I am not arguing that the concern with fertility was a uniquely Mewun
concern. But what did strike me as unusual after my fieldwork, and after
reading much of what Deacon had written, was the way fertility was con
nected with Mewun elders, then and now, and particularly the way fertility
was and is a reflection of their concept of "place" as a symbol connecting the
living with the dead, and with the ecosystem. In contrast to many other areas
where, with education and European cultural influence, elders seem to lose
power to the young, the Mewun gerontocracy still retains much of its au
thority. In Deacon's time older men held sway over young men through their
FOLLOWING DEACON
183
control of pigs, which were necessary bridewealth to obtain a wife and the
fertility that accompanied marriage. Today, young men of Mewun are held
under the control of the group's elders through the older men's direct control
of marriageable women they have claimed through fosterage. Although
bridewealth in pigs has been replaced by sister exchange, older men still
control these "sisters" today, as they did pigs in earlier times. As long as they
control the women, they also have much influence over would-be bridegrooms, eager to attain the status that accompanies marriage and fertility.
In a sense, Mewun would seem to articulate with Rivers' earlier theory of
Melanesian gerontocracy, formed on the basis of his Pentecost and Ambrym
research-that various anomalous forms of marriage were the consequences
of elders' dominance over younger men and their monopoly of younger women.
Prevented from marrying women of their own generation, young men eventually took cast-off wives the older men no longer wanted. Elders would customarily dispose of their wives to their sons' sons and their sisters' sons. This
custom would then make common practices of two forms of marriage Rivers
proposed as explanations of certain Melanesian kinship anomalies: marriage
with the wife of the father's father or with the wife of the mother's brother
(Langham 1981:111). In Deacon's time, the South West Bay area might well
have promised, at first glance, to be an ideal location to confirm Rivers'
theory of anomalous marriage. But although superficially well-suited to the
intensive genealogical research concerns of Deacon's day, South Malekula
was to yield little more than confusion to Rivers' and Deacon's views of Melanesian history and social organization.
Today, both gerontocratic privilege and control of marriage work through
Mewun concern for the preservation of their place. Mewun interest in fertility goes beyond immediate society, status, or demography, into the sociomythic concept of the place. When I asked why all men were so very intent
on marriage now (for marital politics dominate Mewun men in a competitive
and intense way) men replied that they were afraid that, if they did not
marry, their place would die. Remarks like this meshed with Deacon's previously cryptic descriptions, like that of "The Making of Man"; all of them
revolved around an enduring interest in the place. 3 Thus, Deacon's records
unlocked for me the depth of the ideology of place as a structure enfolding
and extending kinship relations. With his training in the genealogical method,
Deacon saw Mewun organization in terms of kinship, but his text itself betrays his difficulties with this approach. Indeed, it is these difficulties with
kinship and social organization as much as his repeated references to the role
3. The interest in "place" may be widespread in Vanuatu: after the country received its
independence, its citizens were designated as woman pies or man pies, which is Bislama pidgin
for "woman of the place" or "man of the place."
184
joAN LARCOM
of place in social life that suggest his emphasis on kinship as the paramount
factor in social life was misplaced.
Some of his struggles with kinship, which did much to redirect my atten
tion to locality or place as the focal point of social organization, justify a
more detailed discussion. Operating within the Riversian framework, Deacon
gathered lists of kinship terms from Mewun and adjacent districts. He pro
posed that Mewun was divided into kin groups tied to particular villages by
origin myths, totems, and property rights. These kinship units he described
as "local, patrilineal, exogamous descent groups or clans" (Deacon 1934:52),
each tracing descent from a single village or locality.
However, when he sought to define Mewun clans more precisely, in terms
of their actual genealogical relationships, he learned there was no Mewun
word for the entity he called "clan." The closest approximation to this was
words meaning "one village" or "gong-beat." Thus, one would inquire of a
man to what clan he belonged by asking, "The name of village one thy?"
(Deacon 1934:52). But "one village" could be a misleading gloss. Often a
village was seen as a "parent," with "offspring" villages as satellites continuing
to recognize the ceremonial and mythic sacred place in the "parent" village.
Although they resided elsewhere, those living in the "offspring" villages con
sidered themselves still to belong to the "parent" village; and marriages be
tween the "parent" and the "offspring" villages were usually, but not always,
forbidden.
"Gong-beat" (nambog) was also problematic as a term for "clan." Deacon's
text notes that "all the villages of a single clan are further united in the
possession of a distinctive gong-beat . . . , which strangely enough is the
only name which the clan possesses" (Deacon 1934:54). This gong-beat would
be two or three distinctive rhythms used for drum-signalling the "parent" and
"offspring" villages represented by it. But again anomalously, a certain "clan"
(as Deacon defined this social unit) might have three gong-beats to itself,
permitting intermarriage between certain members of the group. The impli
cations of this anomaly for exogamy or clan rights are not explored in Dea
con's notes or book. To add further to the muddle, several of these "gong
beats" were translated to denote "place": "Is it at your place?"; "Is my ...
pig at your place?"; "A man of my place is dead" (Deacon 1934:500-501).
The link between gong-beat and place, rather than clan, is certainly at least
suggested in Deacon's book.
Thus neither "one village" nor "gong-beat" glossed adequately as Deacon's
"local, patrilineal, exogamous descent groups." Both sometimes worked at
cross-purposes to the genealogical exogamy Deacon proposed as part of mar
riage regulation of kinship groups. Loyalty or ceremonial recognition of the
centrality of a given sacred place known as the logho was apparently the only
FOLLOWING DEACON
185
residual and consistent basis for determining the exogamous unit that Deacon
referred to as clan. People belonging to such a place and observing the rituals
for a specific logho did not intermarry (for detailed discussion, see Larcom
1980:63-72).
In his fieldnotes Deacon listed his continuing "sources of confusion" in
kinship (ABDP: Notebook I), one of which was the frequent marriage between ostensibly prohibited relatives. 4 Like Rivers, in whose program he had
been trained, Deacon sought to unravel marriage rules in particular as important bases for the generation of social groups (Schneider 1968:passim;
1982). But after six weeks of research in South West Bay, Deacon wrote to
Armstrong about the perplexing marriage rules (DMGP: ABD/WEA 3/1126):
"In theory, so far as I can see, a man can hardly marry at all." The word for
classificatory brother and sister was extended very broadly beyond the descent
group to all the children of women from a man's mother's clan. Moreover,
this rule prohibiting him from marrying into his mother's family also applied
to his son and his son's son. Deacon learned, however, that such marriage
prohibitions could in practice be easily circumvented. In Mewun and some
surrounding districts a man could dissolve the kinship tie with a female relative simply by giving her family a pig. This was called "washing out the
name," and paved the way for a permissible marriage with that previously
related person (Deacon 1934:137).
Not only were clan relationships rather easily adjusted to other social concerns, but sometimes the concept of clan, as Deacon used it, seemed to have
no basis at all in reality. "Because many groups have died out, a village at
present may stand on ground not rightly belonging to any inhabitant, and
the inhabitants may likely belong to five to six different groups or clans of
which they are the only survivors" (ABDP: Notebook F). Deacon's information remained inconclusive and, as the preceding quote suggests, he attributed the unruly fit of "clan" in Mewun to post-contact influences of missionaries, as well as to depopulation from European-introduced diseases.
How far Deacon might have moved toward reordering his kinship notes
to revolve more centrally around ties to place (logho) rather than those based
on genetic ties can only be conjectured. It is important to remember, though,
that the editor who prepared Deacon's notes for publication was a student in
the same program, and that she came to his notes with the same intellectual
4. As two other principal "sources of confusion," Deacon listed "MBW [mother's brother's
wife) nomenclature" and "counting through male and female lines" (ABDP: Notebook I). The
latter again suggests that Deacon found the flexibility of Melanesian kinship disturbing because
of his loyalty to definitive kinship systems as central modes of organization in each society he
studied.
186
JOAN LARCOM
training-without, however, the confusing experience of a field situation

that defied Riversian interest in coherent kinship systems. In this context, a
subtle shift of emphasis between Deacon's field notes and Camilla Wedgwood's final edited rendition is worth noting.
In his notebook, Deacon wrote concerning clan disarray: "Before European influence disintegrated exogamous descent clans {totemic), all male
members resided in a descent locality" (ABDP: Notebook K). By the time
this statement was elaborated into finished text, its facts were slightly realigned to create some interesting changes in emphasis:
Descent is patrilineal, and before the disintegrating influence of European contact had disturbed the social life of the people, the male members of a clan all
resided in the village or locality in which their fathers, fathers' fathers, and
fathers' fathers' fathers had lived before them, while the women of each such
group went at marriage to live in the localities of their husbands' clans. Today,
however, owing to the very rapid depopulation of the southwestern region, it
is not uncommon to find the survivors of several clans living together in the
same village.
(Deacon 1934:52-53)
Although both versions assume post-contact "disintegration," the fieldnote version gave greater relative emphasis to locality. As Deacon actually
saw them, one of the most distinctive aspects of clan relationships was in
fact locality or place. But in the published version, the genetic aspects of
social organization are spelled out as "fathers, fathers' fathers, and fathers'
fathers' fathers," to eclipse the significance of locality as focal point of social
organization. Thus some of the emphasis on clan and kinship in the final
published version of Deacon's research may well reflect Wedgwood's own in
tellectual commitment to her Cambridge training in the Rivers' tradition. 5
Deacon's difficulties with the kinship system suggest that what he ex
plained as a disruption of genealogical relations through relocation was not
an aberration, but a reflection of the importance of place membership (which
could be changed by fosterage, by local endemic warfare, by the "washing
out" of names) in contrast to genealogical ties. Rereading Deacon in the light
of my own research suggests that while consanguinity may be one viable
5. It is relevant to consider here Wedgwood's role in Rivers' program and her reassertion of
what Deacon tentoftively thought he saw in Malekula: descent localities. A Melanesian re
searcher for many years, Wedgwood remained committed to a view of Melanesian social orga
nization as a blend of territory and kinship. With I. Hogbin as co-author, she later labeled this
blend a "carpel," which was defined as "an exogamous unilineal group which has its social centre
within a parish territory" (1953:243). The term "carpel" has not become widely accepted, al
though it does reftect two concerns with which Deacon struggled, locality and descent.
FOLLOWING DEACON
187
metaphor for Mewun relationships, it is overshadowed by the relational richness of contiguity-the focal idea of living together in the special sacred
place of one's group. Everyone in Mewun belongs to a place, and is identified
by its name, such as a man of Melpmes or woman of Melaai. But this place
is more than a locale. Myth has it that the original inhabitants of a place
came out of the ground in its sacred central point, marked by a stone. In
tum, these people were and are sustained by this ground through food from
its plants and animals. When a man or woman dies, his plants and animals
become inedible or tabu to his neighbors because the deceased is that plant
or animal. As Deacon put it, the man is his pig (Deacon 1934:539), and
eating his pig is not only a hostile gesture, like cannibalism, but one that
will make any friend of the dead person weep from memory. Mewun see both
the food source and the person as incorporated quite literally by their common ground. "There is a very close spiritual alliance between the people of
a clan, their [sacred place] and all things that live therein taken collectively"
(Deacon 1934:798). When Mewun die, they return to the "dark Paradise" as
underground ancestral spirits. Ancestors from time to time become living
beings again, but not in a sense of reincarnation that suggests rebirth through
time cycles. For Mewun the spirits of the dead are always present; when the
living sleep, their spirits socialize with those of the dead. All plants, animals,
the quick and the dead, are held in relationship with one another through
the centrality of place.
The priority of place over kinship as an organizing construct is supported
also by the significance of fosterage, or the process of feeding someone which
ties that person into the foster parents' place. Food-sharing seems long to
have been the basis of strong personal ties in South Malekula: "Two men who
habitually eat together, sharing a common meal, come to feel that they are
united by a very intense bond, by something that may be described almost as
love" (Deacon 1934:538). Similarly, fosterage is not a debt to be repaid by
the loyalty and adherence of the young fostered person; rather it is a gesture
that incorporates the place itself into the individual who is fostered. By eating the food of the place, persons-even newcomers dislocated from their
birthplaces-are brought into the set of relationships organized around the
socio-mythic place.
Of course, this is an oversimplified statement of the Mewun view of place;
I have written on it in more detail elsewhere (Larcom 1980). But I would
like to stress here that I would never have been aware of its complexity or
persistence had I not had the benefits of Deacon's perceptions, his notes on
the making of man, on food taboos, place names and epithets, and his repeated and unresolved struggles with the inadequacy of kinship as an organizing principle.
188
]OAN LARCOM
FIELDWORK: READING BETWEEN THE LINES ..

Deacon's faith in the hypotheses he brought with him to Malekula was at
least shaken by his fieldwork on that island. From the beginning he was aware
of the effect his preconceptions might have on his research success:
The consciousness of a connexion between two things forms gradually, till
it becomes a general hypothesis for the working out of a number of problems.
These lead on again, the thing becomes unconsciously modified, and you find
everything needs rearranging. . . . Generally you are unconscious that you have
been associating things in a certain way till it suddenly becomes necessary to
associate them in another. ... [I]t is ghastly how conventional one is, in
thought-I mean in the deepest most analytic or most imaginative thought ...
(ABDP: ABD/MG n.d.)
Letters home reveal his despair over the incoherence of Malekulan social
life and his diminished loyalty to any particular working hypothesis. Well
into his fieldwork (possibly from Lambumbu where he w;irked without the
companionship of other Europeans for four months) he wrote: "It is very
difficult, in more or less complete isolation, to gain sufficient stimulus for
work. I find I have to build it up internally by theorizing. Almost any hy
pothesis is good enough to get on with. I feel very grey at present about the
possibility of making a coherent system of the New Hebrides or Malekula"
(ABDP: ABO/MG n.d. ). In particular he was disillusioned by Rivers' theory:
Rivers' theory I begin to find a hindrance. I was brought up on it at Cambridge,
and now it cloys me. On every page I want to cry out "But there arc so many
other things!!" and in lots of it I am very much puzzled to know what Rivers
really thought about certain things-whether he was aware of particular difficulties, whether he regarded them as difficulties.
(ABDP: ABD/MG n.d.)
We can only speculate about most of those "certain things" Deacon found
hard to fit into Rivers' theory, but surely Deacon's problems as he sought to
identify exogamous clans were among the "particular difficulties" he e .. ..:oun
tered. His struggles with conflicting data, rooted in locality, may weil i.ave
been another. His notes and book do mention the importance of place, cis a
ceremonial focal point known as the logho, an identifiable part of gong-.1eat
queries and responses. The significance of Melanesian localism was not h~t
on Deacon: "The native is essentially a villager and an agriculturist, but he
has a wider 'county' or 'district' life which corresponds to our 'national' lifeit is higher than our 'county' or 'district' life since it is that of the whole
social group, the 'county'" (ABDP: ABO/MG n.d.).
But Deacon's fieldwork method was not suited to a study of stability or
consistency derived from localism. As noted earlier, he was interested in
FOLLOWING DEACON
189
comparative genealogical information, a research inquiry well adapted to mobile

investigations in successive areas. After six weeks in South West Bay, he
wrote to Armstrong: "Most work here is really archaeology, and I am doubtful
about the value of remaining the whole time in one place, unless one can
spend, say two years out here-then you might get a more profound knowledge, which would be extremely valuable" (DMGP: ABO/WEA 3/1/26).
Deacon stayed on there for three and a half more months, during which time
he used the genealogical method to decode the social organization of several
defunct cultural districts (Wien, Hurtes, Wiliemp), as well as two surviving
ones (Mewun and Seniang). He moved to Lambumbu and Lagalag for four
months, followed by a month of research in northeast and eastern Malekula.
Even his most successful Ambrym investigations, which spanned late November through early February, were interrupted by at least one trip back to
Malekula (DMGP: ABO/WEA 12/6/26). Despite the fact that his fieldwork
definitely disturbed his initial expectations concerning Malekulan social organization, Deacon's mobility did not encourage him to rework or reconsider
his interest in genealogical inquiries. In his view, place membership remained
a manifestation of clan membership, rather than something more fundamental that was simply expressed in a kinship idiom.
Just as Deacon's field experience caused him to move away somewhat from
his prior commitment to Rivers' theory, so fifty years later did my research in
South West Bay also alter preconceptions carried to Mewun. If Deacon's
search for a coherent social organizational system was disrupted by Malekulan
concerns with place, so in a similar way my initial theoretical view of social
change was shaken by the tenacity of native ideology about the same organizing construct-place.
I went to the field with a theory of cultural change, particularly Melanesian, that proved to be ill-founded. Steeped in Melanesian ethnography before I arrived in Malekula, I had been persuaded by other writers, as well as
by Deacon's book, that the cultural life of Melanesians was unusually vulnerable to the attractions of Westernization and the temptations of a cash economy (Sorenson 1972). Like Deacon, I carried with me to the field theoretical
interests nurtured by my graduate training; finding myself in mission villages
on the Malekulan coast, I planned to analyze social change using the processual model propounded by Fredrik Barth (1967) and others. This approach
focussed on the assumption that social change occurs as individuals make
rational choices to maximize social or economic gains.
Research with the Mewun jeopardized several concepts inherent in Barth's
utilitarian model, but the issue of individual maximization as an explanation
for social change was, in particular, a dead end. After a half-year in Mewun
I began to explore cash cropping as an indication of increased economic
changes in families appearing to acculturate quickly. During my first six months
190
)oAN LARCOM
of fieldwork the price of copra or dried coconuts, the most common cash
crop, had risen from its lowest price in decades to an all time high. Yet I did
not notice villagers spending increased amounts of time processing copra. To
explain this, and to see if I was missing some important economic shifts, I
sought the help of a Tahitian-Chinese store owner who had been purchasing
most of the Mewun copra for twenty years. When I asked him which Mewun
man or family was selling him the most copra, he made a noise of disgust:
"When you see a man take his family and move far away from this place,
then I'll show you a man who is interested in money." Within a single sen
tence, he thus sewed together place and persistence, which had already been
connected by many Mewun comments I had continually misread through my
incompatible hypothesis.
Arriving in Mewun with the preconception that here was an area accul
turating (or de-culturating) quickly to a very Western pattern, I left Malekula
with a contrary impression-one of Melanesians as tenacious and persistently
recreating what they deemed to be significant parts of their organization, not
just socially and economically but also spiritually. This sense of persistence
within a superficially changing atmosphere had struck me especially when I
read Deacon's letters about fieldwork. His comments on change were state
ments I could have written myself: "All the natives round S. W. Bay are
'civilized'! Smith-Rewse [British Resident Commissioner in Vila, New He
brides] says that 'trade' is not much use-the natives have got used to
money.... Even in the interior the natives know they can buy what they
want with silver money, and prefer it to 'trade'" (ACHP: ABD/ACH 1/3/
26). If Mewun people were on the road to acculturation when Deacon wrote
about them, they did not seem to have travelled along it much further in the
fifty years before my arrival. What persisted during those years, however, was
not a house type, an enduring ritual, or a style of dress. It was rather a
constantly recreated ideological core, focussed on the meaning of place as
the locus and organizer of fertility and cultural life.
Under the influence of fieldwork, both Deacon and I moved away from
our original hypotheses. While he grew toward a tentative interest in place
as a significant part of descent systems, I went in the direction of a fresh
appreciation of the tenacity of ideology. Reacting to my own fieldwork in the
context of Deacon's writing, I was persuaded to set aside the Barthian
individual-focussed, processual model of change, and to move to a view of
Mewun culture as one dominated by ideological principles, one of which is
the socio-mythic place, constantly being maintained, implemented, and sup
ported by creative but in a sense superficial changes. Rather than an archeo
logical record of what had disappeared in Mewun, Deacon's written work
thus proved more valuable to me as a view of what remained. As I put aside
FOLLOWING DEACON
191
my hopes for original authority and explored Deacon's research records in

conjunction with my own, new aspects of each of our observations and new
relationships between them were highlighted. Thus his notes, his letters, and
his book helped me to achieve both a new sense of the meaning of place and
an understanding of the ideology persisting behind that concept of locality.
But Deacon's most significant contribution to my research was a general lesson-that of the importance of our precursors' texts in our continuing work.
IN PRAISE OF PRECURSORS
This returns us to the broader meaning of predecessors for those who follow
them. Ethnographers today are confronted by a double task: the interpretation of a culture, and the interpretation of ethnographic writing about that
culture. Anthropologists have long been aware of the first task. They have
plumbed their subjects' experience, giving meaning to it, even discovering
things about a people that they could not themselves articulate. Fieldworkers
have not hesitated to interpret, sometimes quite freely, the behavior of people
they observe. They are perhaps less willing to accept that such interpretation
is also appropriate to the works of our predecessors-not only ethnographers,
but also missionaries, government officials, and travellers. These writings are,
in effect, part of the field, and anthropology works increasingly in a literary
context.
Literary criticism, with its growing recognition of sociological context,
has come part way to meet anthropology since I studied and forsook it. The
criticism that drove me into anthropology was the so-called "new criticism,"
now very old. It viewed its enterprise as a textual decoding of the author's
secret meaning. More recent criticism tends to view literature as written by
more than an author-by history, by social space, by language and other
symbols (Barthes 1977:155-64). Once an author releases a book, its meaning becomes public rather than private, open rather than closed. While the
author produces some of a book's meaning, only part of this significance is
produced by writing-the rest is created by reading or rereading. Thus a
literary work may now be seen as a field of meaning that the reader, at least
in part, creates.
While anthropologists have always regarded cultural behavior as a field of
signification, they may now begin to see the works of their predecessors as an
additional part of the field to be interpreted. Deacon's work, Malekula, lends
itself particularly well to rereading in this fashion. This is in part due to the
posthumous compilation process undertaken by Camilla Wedgwood. The difficulties of her project have been described by her mentor Haddon:
192
)OAN LARCOM
This was a very heavy task as the notes and descriptions were written at various
times, often on odd scraps of paper, and usually without any indication of place
or date .... The methods that Miss Wedgwood had often to adopt were rather
in the manner of Sherlock Holmes than those of an ordinary editor. . . . [Dea
con's] notes tell very little about the daily life and behaviour of the people, but
this would have been supplied had he been spared to put his material into book
form. This background of knowledge and his reflection upon what he was told
and what he himself observed are irretrievably lost to us, and for this reason
the book does not do justice to this highly endowed, painstaking, and thoughtful investigator.
(Deacon l 934:xxviii)
Wedgwood had at hand the debris of the ethnographic process: sketchy,

unlocated and undated notes, including rituals, magical spells, kinship terms,
etc. Some notes were limited analyses of social organization on Malekula
virtually ready for publication, while others were disoriented, with no reference to place, time, or informant. Some of Deacon's papers were in fact lost
(those left at South West Bay when he died there), and portions of the rest
were certainly disarrayed before they were sent to England.
As I have suggested, I initially found the resulting text to be unwieldy and
rather irrelevant. Edited by a hand unfamiliar with the facts recorded, the
ethnographic detail in Deacon's book had often been exoticized to the point
of incomprehensibility. Since the readily familiar aspects of Malekulan life
were exactly what Deacon did not record, Wedgwood did not have this crucial interpretive road into the data; her compilation could not reflect the
ethnographer's creative interplay between the familiar and the strange.
But there turned out to be a positive side to this style of ethnography.
Wedgwood found it impossible to evaluate some of the disconnected notes
taken down by Deacon, and this persuaded her to include in the book sizeable
chunks of the descriptive texts given him by the Mewun. Wedgwood was
aware that her decision to include texts and ritual descriptions as well as
untranslated phrases might well overburden Malekula with imponderabilia,
but she defended their inclusion as salvage for the future: "In view, however,
of the fact that the people of Malekula are dwindling in numbers, and that
their culture is rapidly dying out, it seemed better to preserve and put on
record even what is as yet unexplained in the hope that before it is too late,
other workers may elicit the interpretation of these passages" (Deacon
1934:xxxv). Thus, Deacon's book remains an unusually "open" ethnography,
with fruitful possibilities for reinterpretation.
That task is facilitated by the fact that Malekula was composed of more
than fieldnotes and initial analyses. Wedgwood was able also to read many of
Deacon's letters to his mentors, to his mother, and to his friends. In contrast
to the fieldnotes, whose context was largely stored in Deacon's he~d and thus
FOLLOWING DEACON
193
lost, the epistolary material was prepared with a view to communicating Dea
con's experience and thoughts to the recipient, and was therefore to a certain
degree synthesized and comprehensive. True, Deacon revealed different as
pects of his ethnographic workshop to each of his correspondents. In tone
and content his letters to Haddon and Armstrong differ noticeably from those
to his mother and to his close friend Margaret Gardiner. To his professors
Deacon wrote summaries of ethnographic patterns and comments on anthro
pological theory, as well as brief prospectuses on his research plans, on the
information he hoped to supplement and eventually include in a full ethnog
raphy. In contrast, those to Margaret Gardiner, written to an intellectual
equal as well as a confidante, are both speculative and emotional, revealing
his considerable discontent about field methodology and even about the eth
ics and epistemology of the anthropological enterprise:
[S]ets of facts remain constant but the nature of their relation one to another
is changed by every fresh fact, and it is fearfully necessary to go thro' notes and
put in the altered relations, or otherwise the notes may be quite misleading and
almost without value if you died suddenly before "writing up."
(ABDP: ABD/MG n.d.)
Deacon's letters suggest that the more sensitive ethnographers of the early
"intensive study" mode were not untouched by the concerns that have pre
occupied many of the current ethnographic generation. For present purposes,
however, the point is rather that these letters, which facilitated Wedgwood's
earlier task of second-hand ethnographic construction, can also, when read
today in tandem with Malekula, facilitate reconstruction from a different point
of view.
As cultures are more and more intensively studied, and as fieldwork enters
its second half-century, the history of anthropology will no doubt recognize
that ethnographic interpretation is becoming increasingly interwoven with
texts such as Deacon's. Aside from what such texts may offer us for better
understanding of the history of anthropology, there is also the lesson they
offer us for the ongoing practice of fieldwork. Fieldwork itself has already
been acknowledged by some as a "reading" -although one of a text that has
never been written: "Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense
of 'construct a reading of'~ a manuscript-foreign, fadP.d, full of ellipses,
incoherences, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but
written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of
shaped behavior" (Geertz 1973:10). Returning from a field site, the ethnog
rapher carries a "manuscript" no one else has "read." Each fieldworker may
be viewed as harvesting a netful of "fresh facts," but as Deacon perceived, the
relationship between these facts may change with each new catch. With the
increasing number of predecessors' texts, however, a fieldworker can also look
194
joAN LARCOM
to what is past, to the works of precursors, for "old" facts to be used newly,
to be related in original ways to those from our own research.
But is ethnography, then, moving rapidly in the direction of literary criti
cism, with its accretions of "second-hand" commentary? Will ethnographic
field research become optional or even obsolete, subsumed by the textual
reanalysis of written ethnographies? I think not, because fieldwork provides
a context that gives essential and particular meaning to earlier ethnographic
writing about a field site. The need for field experience to give significance
to the work of our ethnographer-predecessors takes us safely away from the
realm of conventional literary criticism.
Deacon was right in assuming that his sets of facts by themselves, without
his interpretations, could be almost valueless; I found this to be the case
when I first read his posthumous ethnography. But to his successors, with
their own context of fieldwork, Deacon's descriptions of South West Bay will
remain an essential resource. Through an analysis of the Mewun ideology of
place and its continuity, I hope to have suggested at least one possible com
pletion or outcome of his most excellent research; I offer this not as a privileged recension of Deacon but as an addition to the growing field of work to
be reread and reinterpreted by our successors, be they other anthropologists
or the Mewun themselves.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Carolyn Clark, James T. Clifford, Triloki Pandey, and George
W. Stocking for their very helpful editorial and substantive comments on this
essay, as well as the librarians of the two repositories in which most of the
manuscript materials I have drawn upon are deposited. I am also grateful to
Margaret Gardiner for several helpful comments, for permitting me to copy
three letters by Deacon to Armstrong that are in her possession, and for
allowing me briefly to consult the manuscript of her forthcoming Memoir of
Bernard Deacon, which is to be published by the Salamander Press of Edin
burgh in 1984. My own argument and use of evidence-deriving as they do
from the comparison of my fieldwork experience with that of Deacon-have
of course been developed entirely independently.
REFERENCES CITED
ABDP. See under Manuscript Sources.
ACHP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Barth, F. 1967. On the study of social change. Am. Anth. 69:661-69.
FOLLOWING DEACON
195
Barthes, R. 1977. Image-music-text. New York.

Bate, W. J. 1970. The burden of the past and the English poet. New York.
Bloom, H. 1973. The anxiety of influence: A theory of poetry. New York.
- - . 1975. A map of misreading. New York.
Burghart, R. 1981. Review of W. H. R. Rivers, by R. Slobodin. Rain 46:9-10.
DMGP. See under Manuscript Sources.
Deacon, A. 1934. Malekula: A vanishing people in the New Hebrides. London.
Gardiner, M. 1982. Bernard Deacon. Rain 49: 10-11.
Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York.
Hogbin, H. I., & C. Wedgwood. 1953. Local groupings in Melanesia. Oceania, vol.
23, no. 4, and vol. 24, no. I.
Lane, R., and B. Lane. 1958. The evolution of Ambrym kinship. Southwest.]. Anth.
14:107-35.
Langham, I. 1981. The building of British social anthropology: W. H. R. Rivers and his
Cambridge disciples in the development of kinship studies 1898-1931. Dordrecht, Holland.
Larcom, J. 1980. Place and the politics of marriage: The Mewun of Malekula, Vanuatu. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Stanford University.
- - - . 1982. The invention of convention. Mankind 13:330-37.
Layard, J. W. 1928. Degree-taking rites in South West Bay, Malekula.]. Roy. Anth.
Inst. 58:139-223.
Muller, K. 1972. Field notes on the small nambas. ]. Soc. Oceanistes 38:153-67.
Patterson, M. 1976. Kinship, marriage and ritual in North Ambrym. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, University of Sydney.
Rivers, W. H. R. 1914. The history of Melanesian society. New York (1968).
- - - . 1922. Essays on the depopulation of Melanesia. Cambridge, England.
Scheffler, H. W. 1970. Ambrym revisited: A preliminary report. Southwest.]. Anth.
26:52-66.
Schneider, D. M. 1968. Rivers and Kroeber in the study of Kinship. In Kinship and
social organization, by W. H. R. Rivers, 7-16. London.
- - - . 1982. Biological and social paternity. Rain 48:17-19.
Sorenson, E. R. 1972. Socio-ecological change among the Fore of New Guinea. Cur.
Anth. 13:349-83.
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
The manuscript materials consulted in writing this essay include the papers of A.
Bernard Deacon in the possession of Ms. Margaret Gardiner of London (cited as
DMGP), those in the Royal Anthropological Institute Library, London (cited as ABDP),
and the papers of A. C. Haddon in the University Library, Cambridge \cited as ACHP).
"FACTS ARE A WORD OF

GOD"
An Essay Review of James Clifford's
Person and Myth: Maurice Leenhardt
in the Melanesian World*
PAUL RABINOW
This is an important book. It is well-crafted, affording us a sensitive and
intelligent presentation of complex issues by an acute and learned observer.
It does its historical and biographical job of restoring to his proper station an
important figure in modern anthropology; a sort of historical justice is accomplished. And it poses an open-ended challenge, an invitation, to rethink our
received understandings of twentieth-century anthropology. Clifford violates
a number of taboos, idees refues, and thereby opens in a constructive fashion
a range of issues and possible future developments.
There are a number of points in the book about which serious debate is
possible. It hesitates. But it is exactly at those points of hesitation t:hat important and unresolved questions are posed. The book hovers between an
excellent, but rather standard biographical form, and a post-structuralist intercalation of mixed genres of texts and voices, between a successful st<>~..-iard
historical approach and a more dangerous post-modern one whose claims to
'Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Paul Rabinow is Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkel.:y.

His works include Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco and (with Hubert Dreyfus) Miche1
Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. His current research is on urban
planning, social science, and political strategies in the French colonies, focussing on
the career of Lyautey in Vietnam, Madagascar, and Morocco.
196
"FACTS
ARE
WoRo OF Goo": AN
EssAY
REVIEW
197
traditional standards are less secure, but whose claims to creativity are stronger.
The tension is not fully resolved; the book's ethos is in the second camp and
its form and most of its content are in the first. A certain tentativeness,
however, is certainly preferable to a false closure.
Maurice Leenhardt, Clifford's protagonist, was born in 1878 into a devout
provincial Protestant family headed by a pastor-cum-geologist. His youth
parallels that of the Third Republic, although the conflicts of religion and
science, local affinities and national consolidation, colonial expansion and
internal implantation and reform which racked the Republic were characteristically muted by the Leenhardt family. These seemingly polar opposites were
turned from antagonistic, negating alternatives, into complexes of mutually
invigorating relations through which character was shaped and an unequivocally public persona forged. The universalism of science and the particularities of locale, the universalism of an ethical calling and the need to accept
the particularities of individual conscience, were both highly formative, mutually supporting, contrasts in Leenhardt's youth. He saw them, however,
not as strict separations, but as a field of differences to grow in. Leenhardt
never rebelled directly against his father's synthesis. But he did reinterpret
these imperatives in his own fashion, emphasizing and developing different
dimensions of the relational oppositions that characterized his milieu. In this
Protestant family, character formation was a central duty.
This is not to say that Leenhardt's youth was without conflict. Living up
to his father's scientific and ethical standards was not easy. Leenhardt failed
his baccalaureat twice, obviously a shock and source of shame for a member
of a bourgeois family. His father, with some reluctance, sent the young man
away to Paris to a Protestant preparatory school, fearing the boy would be
tempted by the worldly aestheticism of the capital. He wasn't. But he did
hate the austerity of the school and its dry, pedantic exercises. Rather than
rejecting them, however, he was led to a search for more redeeming features
within the Protestant institutional world. He discovered these in the Maison
des Missions, home of the Societe des Missions Evangeliques, a non-denominational and multinational society devoted to converting the heathen. Like
many other young people Leenhardt was fascinated by the reports and displays of exotic cultures he encountered at the Maison, which opened for him
a model of missionary activity and a career based on "the primary role of
native Christian pastors and laity and a commitment to linguistic sophistication and translation" (23). After a meeting with two articulate and dignified Malagasy ministers, he felt that he had found a form in which his own
sensibilities and talents could flourish.
After passing his bac in 1898, Leenhardt applied for a position in New
Caledonia. Because of his inexperience, he was accepted only with reluc-
198
PAUL RABINOW
tance by the missionary hierarchy. There had been no other applicants. At

his ordination ceremony, Leenhardt pronounced a farewell speech that was
in some ways a definition of his ethical and scientific task: ''The Christian
church seems nowhere so pure as in missions, where it finds itself liberated
from the dogmatic political debris with which history has burdened it. . . .
It is the young churches in pagan lands who will provide us with the fresh
blood needed for the vitalization of our tired milieux" (29). Leenhardt would
struggle with the contradiction of respect and change throughout his entire
career, gradually moving, through his ethnographic work, to an appreciation
of the maturity and fullness of Melanesian culture, but never fully transcending his commitment to conversion, and hence to the alteration of these other
people's culture. At the time of the ordination speech, however, only a germ
of this existential dilemma is present.
Protestant missionaries were encouraged to marry; Leenhardt did to an
unusually intelligent and steady woman of his class. Shortly thereafter the
Leenhardts boarded a steamer for the six-week voyage to New Caledonia and
a new life. They were greeted at Noumea, a shoddy colonial capital, by a
mayor who asked why they had come, since there would soon be no natives
left for them to missionize. Although the French colony was not entirely
monolithic, and Leenhardt would later learn adroitly to exploit its fissures,
Noumea was marked by insularity, racism, and a pathetically thin mimicking
of remembered "French life." New Caledonia was atypical of French colonialism, however, in that it had been used by the Second Empire as a dumping
ground for criminals. After a forced-labor construction of Noumea itself,
many of these deportees were given plots of land expropriated from the native
inhabitants in the hinterlands. This led to a bloody uprising and repression
in 1878-79, to increased fear of the "savages," and to the establishment of a
reservation system in poor agricultural land high in remote mountains. This
trend was only reinforced in 1894 by the arrival of a staunch Republican
governor, who sought to stop the flow of criminal deportees and launched an
aggressive campaign to attract stable families of French settlers in order to
construct a rural democracy of small, independent landholders. As in other
French colonies, a drive to register and "regularize" land titles led to a further
confiscation of native land holdings, because of the lack of formal titles,
distrust of the authorities and refusal to comply, or simply a post festum validation of the already widespread theft of native lands.
Reservations were established and strictly controlled; native movement
required written permission usually granted only for purposes of labor gangs;
gendarme posts dotted the countryside. Bucolic rural democracy was not the
result. Leenhardt, who was never a categorical anti-colonialist, described the
system of labor contracts as one of "slavery." In sum, at the time of Leenhardt's arrival in New Caledonia,
"FACTS ARE A WoRD OF Goo": AN EssAv REVIEW
199
The plight of the island's Melanesians was indeed desperate. An ever-increasing

European presence-penitentiary, mines, colonization-had shaken their culture to its roots. Leenhardt was already familiar with the litany of disaster:
military conquest, disease, alcoholism, uprooting, the relocation of reservations on inferior lands. In two terrible decades just preceding his arrival (according to the best modern estimates) the indigenous population had fallen by
fully thirty-three percent.
(35)
Leenhardt's consistent stand towards colonialism and the colonial administration was one of loyal opposition. Although he was sorely tested by its
abuses, and his naivete about the mission civilatrice of the French soon lost its
sheen, he never turned against the colonial mission of France per se. The
complexity of his understanding deepened over the years, but never to the
point of a radical alteration of perspective. Leenhardt opposed the exploitative aspects of the colonial system, but in fact spent his life working within
its purview. If change was inevitable, Leenhardt held, it was best that as
much as possible of the indigenous culture be preserved-through conversion.
Leenhardt's early experience of colonial administration is meshed with
what he called "government anthropology." As needs for labor power increased, the government pushed for a tighter "tribal" organization-one they
could control, catalogue, and observe directly. While Leenhardt opposed these
abuses, he also opposed colonialist administrators who sought to freeze local
customs into a timeless mold of supposed tradition. Leenhardt believed both
in the inevitability and the preferability of change in New Caledonia-he
could hardly have been a missionary and believed otherwise-but he was
optimistic about the potential for cultural change as an authentic evolution
that did not rip asunder all links to the past. Leenhardt saw, somewhat paradoxically, that the government's position of relativism was a tool for preventing the Melanesians from developing means of self-defense. If the Melanesians were to survive with any cultural authenticity at all, they would
have to develop ways of coping with the coming world, meaningfully. Although Leenhardt was one of the great ethnographic explorers of "archaic
consciousness," he still believed that it was archaic, and that progress was
inevitable.
Clifford makes a compelling comparison between Leenhardt and Michel
Leiris, whose classic essay of 1950, "L'ethnographe devant le colonialisme,"
is still the most lucid and uncompromising condemnation of colonialism and
anthropological complicity to have been written. Unlike Leiris, Leenhardt
never abandoned what can only be called his blind faith in the rayonnement
de la culture fraTlfaise: despite all his years of bitter experience of the racism,
exploitation, and lack of cross-cultural communication on New Caledonia,
200
PAUL RABINOW
he clung to a belief in the universal possibility and necessity for progress,

democracy, citizenship, and Christianization under the French flag. And yet
the programs of Leiris and of Leenhardt for anthropology in the face of co
lonialism are rather similar. Leiris called for a political advocacy of native
culture, but distinguished between "safe-guarding small cultures and preserv
ing them-as objects of study and aesthetic appreciation" (197). He called
for offering the possibility of education, preferably bilingual and bicultural,
that emphasized local custom and history. Leenhardt would not only have
agreed with this type of program-he spent his life instituting it.
Both Leenhardt and Leiris agreed that in this encounter between colonized and colonizer, Western culture had the most to learn spiritually. The
distortions-sexual, aesthetic, corporal-that had eroded French culture could
perhaps be redirected, softened, and ameliorated by an open and patient
contact with these other peoples. The final task was not to resist change, but
a more hermeneutic one: the necessity to study the other so as to return,
changed, to oneself. This difficult journey was indeed one that Leenhardt
and Leiris both accomplished in differing but exemplary fashions. Leenhardt's
naivete was to think that the petit colon government officials, or the directors
of the nickel mining company, or the head of the Missionary Society, were
interested in pursuing such a quest.
At the time of Leenhardt's arrival, about one-third of the native popula
tion had been converted to Catholicism, and an active and successful cam
paign of Protestant conversion was being waged by native missionaries from
the nearby Loyalty Islands under the direction of a French missionary, Phil
adelphe Delord. "The early evangelists' message was simple: learn to read,
learn to count, give up drinking, and attend prayer meetings. Among the
surrounding colonists, however, such a message was construed as an encour
agement to insurrection" (43-44). In this delicate and dangerous situation
Leenhardt undertook two different types of activity, often in tension if not
outright contradiction. The organizational task of consolidating and expand
ing the mission's position put Leenhardt constantly in conflict with the co
Ionia! administration. Leenhardt, the "participant," saw the necessity for de
fending his flock and their basic human rights against a predatory colonial
environment. Over time; he developed a set of tactics for exploiting the
innumerable petty differences, rivalries, and factions within the colonial hi
erarchy. This entailed a painful self-control, a delay of protest: an imitation
of a native mask of acquiescence. Clifford's account of Leenhardt's patience
and progress-and the subsequent loss of many of the gains by his less sophisticated or less talented replacements-suggests how much such a strategy
depended on Leenhardt's unique skills, and how little generalizable as a method
they proved to be.
Leenhardt the "observer" faced an even more difficult task. Gradually he
"FACTS ARE A WoRD
OF
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201
came to see that ethnographic understanding was a linchpin both for his own
mission and for the survival in a healthy form of the "Canaques" (the French
colloquial appellation for the native Melanesians). The task of the missionary/
ethnographer was to gain an understanding of local culture that would enable
him to change it without "violating" its life-sustaining form. The missionary,
as opposed to the anthropologist with his "easy relativism," could never be a
mere observer. His observation was always observation for change. "As a
veteran, Leenhardt would pose a rule of conduct for novice evangelists: they
should never forbid any native custom that they had not first thoroughly
understood" (62). To those of us not imbued with the missionary calling such
a credo is chilling. And yet, Clifford shows how this stance led Leenhardt
(and other exceptional and honest missionaries) to a sustained inquiry about
other cultures often surpassing that achieved by more scientifically oriented
ethnographic colleagues. Leenhardt spent decades, not months, in the field;
he truly mastered the local dialects; he believed in the sacred, as did those he
studied. In a changing world, the missionary contributed to change; but the
best missionaries, Clifford suggests, directed that change in a hermeneutic
fashion: one that would deepen their own spirituality while helping the native culture both to preserve something of the power of tradition and to
develop means of making sense of rapid and often brutal changes. But as
Clifford makes clear, sustaining such a hermeneutic was complex and problematic, even for Leenhardt. Few in Leenhardt's missionary headquarters, or
among his successors, really followed such a route-a failure that was to be
a constant source of doubt and pain for him.
Another dialectic was also at work. Clifford shows us that Leenhardt became increasingly suspicious of his own successes. Protestantism was expanding, Leenhardt was ostensibly getting the job done; but doubts persisted for
him about the depth of these conversions. In this context, Leenhardt became
preoccupied in the 1920s with the importance of ethnography as a tool for
comprehending Canaque culture. He had been introduced to the work of the
Durkheimians and Levy-Bruh! before the war; and although he rejected their
conclusions as too schematic and general, too removed from on-the-ground
complexities, his work was increasingly informed by their questions. In good
ethnographic fashion, he saw the Melanesian synthesis not as "prelogical"
but as a fully valuable, cohesive, and autonomous synthesis of elements of
tradition, locale, and myth. And yet, inherent in missionary work was a push
to situate his understanding of the worth of primitive culture in an evolutionary context that would provide a justification for conversion. Conversion
for Leenhardt entailed a move "from concrete towards abstract modes of thought
and expression, from a diffuse, participatory consciousness toward selfconsciousness, from the affective domain of myth toward detached observation and analysis. The process must not, however, be accomplished in simple
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PAUL RABINOW
imitation of whites, but rather as an independent invention. It must develop

as 'some kind of appropriate civilization, affirming itself gradually'" (78). The
problem was how to accomplish this conversion without totally destroying
the earlier cultural synthesis.
Leenhardt's answer was to develop a dialectic of understanding and change
based on a concept of "translation." Clifford shows, with a great deal of sym
pathy and originality, how Leenhardt's conception of translation of cultural
texts was conceived as a back and forth appropriation and re-translation of
the key symbols of Canaque culture to the Bible and then back again. Broadening the French Protestant conception of God, he sought to create a more
androgynous, less transcendent, more local one. It is in Clifford's descriptions
of this process that Leenhardt's reply to a Parisian questioner as to how many
people he had converted on New Caledonia-one!-can be appreciated.
Clifford opens the second half of his book with a hortatory admonition for
the need to rethink and recast anthropology. "Anthropology, a science and
an aesthetic that functioned rather comfortably within the imperial context,
can no longer ignore that its 'data' -the human objects of its study and
affection-have often been exploited, sometimes dying, individuals and cultures. As a response to this unhappy circumstance, a tone of elegiac regret is
no longer sufficient" (124-25). But this is in fact the tone of Clifford's book!
I hesitated to write that sentence until I understood that one of Clifford's
strengths is exactly that his "deconstruction" of anthropological texts does
not exempt his own from the process; even better, Clifford supplies all the
tools to do the job. But he does not quite finish the task.
Clifford rightly indicates the refusal to thematize the colonial context in
anthropology has produced a series of systematic aberrations. The political
field in which anthropologists worked has been supposedly erased by "scien
tific" methods of inquiry and description. But, clearly, this approach has yielded
neither a science nor an adequate description of the processes of change that
"primitive society" was undergoing during this century. Both of these points
are by now almost commonplace. There is another position, however, which
is more controversial: a religious position which holds that the destruction
and alteration of primitive culture are somehow transformed by the process
of conversion and thereby transcended. Leenhardt was committed to this
path. But is Clifford? At key junctures he poses this problem as a series of
questions and contradictions, thereby avoiding judgment, and thereby pro
ducing the tone of elegaic regret. Clifford keeps all the right balls in the air,
but at times he is perhaps a little too adroit for his own good.
The aestheticization of culture that we find in Leenhardt (grounded in a
religious world view), and in Clifford (grounded in a textualist stance), is
perhaps indication of a refusal to push the implications of the political and
"FACTS ARE A Woao OF Goo": AN EssAY REVIEW
203
existential realities of "conversion" to their endpoints. The problem may well

be more acute for Clifford than it was for Leenhardt. For, after all, Leenhardt
was a missionary. Clifford provides us the materials for constructing a critique
of Leenhardt's choices, but stops short of using them.
Clifford proposed to switch our analytic attention from an exclusive emphasis on the Other to a more vulnerable, dialectic and plural analysis of the
research process itself. Although both of Clifford's admonitions are welcome
reminders, they are hardly the pathbreaking suggestions they would have
been in Leenhardt's time. In the last ten years there has been an increasing
volume of literature on the historical and political circumstances of the practices of anthropology. Clifford and Jean Jamin are currently writing what
promises to be a major work in this vein on anthropology and surrealism
between the wars in France. There have also been a fair number of attempts
to describe the anthropological process itself (Crapanzano 1980; Favret-Saada
1977; Rabinow 1977). That there is much that remains unsaid is clear. I
think, however, that Clifford is also hinting at something yet more radical.
Clifford's thesis is that there was no unspannable gulf between Leenhardt
the Ethnologist and Leenhardt the Missionary; only a field of tensions in
which Leenhardt forged his life. Clifford quotes Merleau-Ponty on the healthy
man: one who uses the contradictions in his life in a creative way. Rejecting,
however, recourse to such demode categories as a "life," Clifford "applied to
Leenhardt his own theory of the Melanesian person, a person seen as decentered, 'outside' itself, continually rising to occasions. The notion of an 'inner'
life is probably best understood as a fiction of fairly recent, and far from
universal, application-even in the West" (6). Later, Clifford relates this
conception of the person, in passing, to Lacan's notion of the decentered
subject (185). Whatever the abuses such a conception might engender, it
can also open up a method for writing a biography in which the person, his
time, and unresolved contradictions are seen not as antagonistic but as fused.
The result can be, as in this case, a provocative challenge to rethink our own
experiences and our own modes of inquiry. Although hesitating between
structuralist depersonalization and a hermeneutic flood of signification, this
contribution is surely one of the most original of Clifford's book.
We come back, however, to ethnography. Leenhardt worked "mainly" with
the converted. His central concern as a missionary was not to eradicate the
pre-Christian culture of the Canaques, but to find ways to translate what was
living in that culture, and compatible with Christianity, into a new synthesis.
Leenhardt was well suited to carrying this delicate task to fruition because in
his family piety and science had gone hand in hand. His father's motto, after
all, was "Facts are a word of God." But natives are not rocks, and the divine
order his father saw in geologic formations is not of the same order as claiming to find a divine order, however sensitively and nervously relativized, among
204
PAUL RABINOW
groups of human beings who conceived of themselves in other terms. Leen

hardt was "far from the sort of missionary who attempted to forbid or forcibly
disrupt the practices of the unconverted. He did, however, claim moral au
thority over Protestants, those who, in theory at least, had made a break
with tradition" (135)-that is to say, Leenhardt's informants. I think Clifford
hesitates here. He is presenting Leenhardt's ethnography as being, to an ex
tent, exemplary; the emphasis on change, on text, on multivocality, Clifford
is telling us, is the way to go. But surely he cannot mean that these elements
are exemplary for us, as anthropologists, in the way Leenhardt fused themethnography and conversion. As Clifford says at such junctures in his book:
questions, questions.
This ambiguity and perhaps ambivalence is made clearer by examining
Clifford's presentation of Leenhardt's method of "intertextuality." Clifford
juxtaposes Leenhardt's emphasis on the collection of vernacular texts with
that of Boas and of Malinowski. The constitution of an indigenous record
preserves something of a once living culture for posterity; one thinks of Geertz's
"record of humanity" as a repository of textual sources available for reinter
pretation. This sort of record was at the heart of Leenhardt's procedures. His
best informants were trained rigorously and patiently in the transcription of
their own culture's texts. By so doing, Clifford claims, a co-authored text,
one beyond a single "interpretive authority," was produced. Leenhardt's early
works, Notes d'ethnologie neo-caledonienne (1930), Documents neo-caledoniennes
(1932), Vocabulaire et grammaire de la langue Houailou (1935), are all products
of this method. Ethnography became an informed transcription hovering close
to the ground, to use another Geertzian phrase, never soaring far above the
text. Leenhardt typically presents a page of Houailou vernacular, accompan
ied by a strict literal transcription and juxtaposed to a free rendering in French.
Leenhardt trained a small battalion of Canaque Protestants in transcription
and set them loose to write their own texts: fifteen different transcripteurs are
listed on one title page. Clifford emphasizes that the ethnographer was not
present to direct (distort) the content of the text. Even if this were true, it
is not clear why this is important-the texts in such a post-structuralist pro
jection cannot claim any authenticity, or be somehow "truer" expressions of
Canaque culture. Rather-and I think this is or should be what Clifford is
claiming-they represent an ethically superior product of joint work and
mutual recuperation. They have gained a poetic superiority. A new hybrid is
thereby created: categories violated, genres blurred, worlds fused.
Again Clifford gives us the tools with which we could deconstruct this
position if we wanted to. He tells us that the texts were obviously divorced
from the immediate contexts of ritual performance in which they arose and
to which they were meaningfully related. Surely the informants lost richness
by practicing an art of transcription they had not fully mastered, and which
"FAcTs ARE A WoRo oF Goo": AN EssAY REvrnw
205
paled alongside their own verbal eloquence. Finally, the mere fact of writing
"implied a considerable degree of self-conscious distance from the customs
described and thus could inject an element of abstraction and overintellectualization into the primary ethnographic evidence" (140). There is also an
obvious element of self-censorship. The reader of these transcriptions was
Leenhardt; his informants had been carefully trained as to what was Christian
and what was not. Leenhardt's informants' livelihood and even safety depended on their ongoing relationship with him. Thus co-authoring is not
without its context. The juxtaposing of a certain Foucaultian imagery of the
anthropologist as dossier collector, scientist, and jurist with a certain Derridean imagery of the missionary/ethnographer and flock tracing inter-textual
productions is not totally convincing. As I indicated earlier, however, one of
the consistent strengths of Clifford's book is its resolute honesty and its opening up of important questions that rarely have pat answers. All the evidence
is there; the counter-interpretations one might produce are opened up by the
text itself. After some thought, I decided that Clifford is very wise in sustaining a certain ambiguity in his work. However, the line between ambiguity
and complicity presumably must be drawn somewhere. At times Clifford seems
to equate the patience and good sentiments Leenhardt displayed with his
informants with a post-structuralist method of co-authorship. But surely the
point of post-structuralist, post-authorial writing is not conversion? Nonetheless, many interesting paths are suggested for our future exploration. If
fieldwork and anthropology are interpersonal, cross-cultural processes, Clifford is correct in reminding us that "the 'authorship' of its initial written data
is plural and not easily specified" (144).
In 1926 Leenhardt returned to Paris to face an uncertain future. He was on
bad terms with the directors of the Missionary Society, who disapproved of
his unorthodox methods. He accepted some teaching at the mission headquarters in Paris, but clearly was not welcomed there. He and his wife worked
in the Paris Mission Populaire de la Bienvenue as urban missionaries; until
1938 he was the secretary of the Ligue de la Moralite Publique. He never
turned on the church; he stoically accepted its "rules"; he was not a rebel.
It was the newly forming anthropological world in Paris that would give
Leenhardt a place, a context within which he could grow for the rest of his
life. The two most important actors were Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Marcel
Mauss. He found in them a combination of erudition and political humanism
which, although profoundly different from his own, was nonetheless highly
compatible. Leenhardt thrived in a field of differences that allowed, nay produced, dialogue. The differences between these men in age, religion, class,
status, and theoretical opinion proved mutually enriching. Levy-Bruh! in
particular turned to this professor of "Canaque humanities" to test, and ulti-
206
PAUL RABINOW
mately to modify profoundly, his own theories of prelogical mentality. Mauss,

a freer personality than the somewhat austere Levy-Bruhl, joined the older
man in protecting Leenhardt and ultimately finding a place for him at the
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, where Leenhardt eventually succeeded
Mauss in the chair of "non-civilized peoples."
In this context, it seems clear that Clifford is proposing a major recasting
of the history of French anthropology. The Durkheim/Mauss/Levi-Strauss
lineage constructed by Levi-Strauss is being gently put in question. I think it
is important to end with a brief exploration of this rereading. The simplest
contrast between Levi-Strauss and Leenhardt concerns the interpretation of
myth. Both men labored to understand the centrality of myth in primitive
life. Both men saw myth as arising out of a concrete environment, where
culture and nature commingled and from which pieces and shreds were patched
together into a larger integrative whole. But from there their paths diverge.
Levi-Strauss pursues "intellect" and Leenhardt "affect." Both have clearly articulated views. Impulses and emotions, Levi-Strauss argues, explain noth
ing: "they are always results, either of the power of the body or the impor
tance of the mind" ( 177). The "cerebral savage" lives between the biochemical
and the logical, with few, if any, important mediations. This is a position
Levi-Strauss has defended for years. For him a vast range of human experi
ences (passions, history, politics, ambiguity, consciousness, action) are epi
phenomenal. But it is exactly these themes (with the exception of politics),
as Clifford has so eloquently demonstrated, that are at the heart of Leen
hardt's work. "Leenhardt refused to reduce emotion to physiological impulse,
nor would he assimilate its conscious expressive modes to rationality. The
heart had its reasons, or perhaps its rhythms. Its structure of articulation was
not, properly speaking, a classification or logic, a metaphysics or theology,
but a given experiential landscape" ( 177). Here Clifford displays his interpre
tive skills, his fine writing, his complex vision. These are the themes that
have been submerged or cast out of French anthropology-to its detriment,
in my opinion-by Levi-Strauss. Leenhardt along with Clifford's other
wellspring, Michel Leiris-Leenhardt's first student-constitute a counter
tradition. Why deny it?
The two camps are not compatible. For Levi-Strauss "it is not important
[at this level], that the mythic processes take place in a Melanesian valley or
in a study at the College de France" (181). The universal human mind, with
its endlessly repetitive operations, is everywhere the same. But the radical
dissatisfaction with the West and the difficult journey out to other fundamen
tally different human experiences can not be bridged so easily. Surely for
Michel Leiris or for Maurice Leenhardt it is precisely the differences between
life in a Melanesian valley and life in the offices and lecture halls of the
College de France that make anthropology worth doing. The historical pro
"FACTS ARE A WoRD OF Goo": AN EssAY REVIEW
207
cess of subsuming the first mode under the discourse and institutions of the
second surely must be criticized, thematized, and understood as an irreducible
mediating level that can not be simply skipped over by thought experiments.
Perhaps this historical process is ineluctable. And yet, it is that added edge
of resistance, found implicitly on almost every page of Clifford's book, thathad it been heightened-might have enabled him to go beyond that tone of
elegaic regret of which he rightly is wary. Nonetheless, James Clifford has
given us much to think and feel about in Person and Myth. We look forward,
with great anticipation, to his future writings.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Burton Benedict and Stephen Foster for their help.
REFERENCES CITED
Crapanzano, V. 1980. Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan. Chicago.
Favret-Saada, J. 1977. Deadly words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge, England.
MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES
THE DAINTY AND THE

HUNGRY MAN
Literature and Anthropology in the
Work of Edward Sapir
RICHARD HANDLER
"We lived, in a sense, lives in which the arts and the sciences fought uneven
battles for pre-eminence." So wrote Margaret Mead of her student days in the
early 1920s at Columbia University (1959:xviii). Mead's "we" refers to a
community of anthropologists that included Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and
Ruth Benedict. That Boas was privately a pianist and the others more publicly poets is well known; that they developed a science of anthropology
centered on the concept of culture and that some of them came to see culture
as the art of living-as lifeways at once "satisfactory and gracious" (Mead
1928:12)-is also well understood. But the connection between the practice
of art and the development of anthropology has been less thoroughly ex
plored. This paper explores that connection in the work of the person for
whom art was perhaps most important-Edward Sapir, Boas' most brilliant
student and a key figure in the development of Boasian anthropology. For
Sapir, art became a medium in which to work out an approach to questions
of culture. What he came to understand in the practice of poetry, music, and
criticism became central to his understanding of culture.
Sapir's contribution to "Boasian anthropology" must be understood in the
context of the tensions and ambiguities in Boas' work, as well as Sapir's ap
proach to their resolution. Two tendencies with respect to the study of cul-
Richard Handler is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lake Forest College. His doctoral dissertation (University of Chicago, 1979)
concerned the relationship of social scientific theory and nationalist ideology in Quebec. He is currently working on a book on the anthropology of Jane Austen's novels.
208
THE DAINTY AND THE HUNGRY MAN: EDWARD SAPIR
209
ture were implicit in Boas (Stocking 1968:214). On the one hand, he saw
culture as "an accidental accretion of individual elements." At the same time,
he recognized that culture could be understood as an organizing spirit or
"genius" continually assimilating these atomistic elements, integrating them
in a "spiritual totality" that must be appreciated as a unique, historical whole.
Beneath this seemingly simple opposition lie a host of epistemological diffi
culties, stemming, at least in part, from Boas' "peculiar position within and
between two traditions in German thought," those of "monistic materialism"
and "romantic idealism" (Stocking 1974a:8-9). Thus, for example, Boas rec
ognized the validity of two types of science, the physical and the historical,
and claimed that each originates in a fundamental disposition of the human
mind. Physical science stems from an "aesthetic" impulse which requires order and systematicity; it seeks general laws that transcend individual facts.
Historical science depends on an "affective" impulse, "the personal feeling of
man towards the world" (Boas 1887:644); it seeks to understand phenomena
in their own terms rather than as exemplifications of general laws. Boas believed that both types of science aimed for "the eternal truth" (643), but at
the same time he feared that the search for true scientific laws meant an
imposition of conceptual schemes onto raw facts. On the other hand, Boas
understood the objects of historical science (cultural wholes and the Geisten
that animated them) as "phenomena having a merely subjective connection" -that is, as phenomena unified only by "the mind of the observer"
(642-43). In this, history was akin to art, for "the way in which the mind is
affected by phenomena forms an important branch of the study" (646). However, Boas also insisted that these subjectively determined phenomena be
studied inductively, that they were, in fact, "directly and concretely oh<>ervable and distinguishable" (Stocking 1974a:13). But, again, to observe and
distinguish cultural wholes it was necessary to examine culture elements,
which meant that "in practice, Boas' historical methodology was perhaps
archetypically exemplified by his quasi-statistical study of the distribution of
folk-tale elements" (Stocking 1974a:l5).
Without attempting to discuss such issues in any detail, let me rephrase
them in terms that more clearly relate them to Sapir's concerns. Simply put,
then, the contrast between element and whole implies the problem of the
ontological status of pattern or structure in human affairs. Are social-scientific
laws nothing more than analytic impositions, or do they describe entities or
aspects of the real world? What is the ontological status of cultural thingsdo whole cultures exist (either as things, or as sets of relations) or are there
only culture elements in ever-changing associations? Finally, how can an
thropologists apprehend the phenomena of culture? Should they work tu
construct general laws of human history, or ought they to focus "affectively"
on the facts themselves? In either case, how are they to go about m1dyln1i
210
RICHARD HANDLER
culture, which, whether directly observable or only a product of the observer's

subjectivity, nonetheless concerns human subjectivity on a grander, collec
tive scale?
Sapir came rather early in his career to differ from Boas with respect to
these questions as they were posed in the study of language. Hymes has writ
ten that "Sapir, more than any American anthropologist,'' realized-as "an
empirical fact"-"that the persistence of recognizable form ... is greater in
language than in culture" (1970:259). Behind this realization lay a facility
for analyzing linguistic form that made Sapir's doctoral dissertation, a gram
mar of Takelma, "almost a miracle for its time" (Hymes & Fought 1975:918).
But though Boas himself recognized Sapir's linguistic brilliance and even deferred to it at the time of the Takelma work, in his own linguistic practice he
"hesitated to carry the reduction to system too far" (Stocking 1974b:462,
479). This was equally true of his approach to culture. In general, Boas'
anthropology was "pre-structural" (Hymes 1961:90; Stocking 1974b:478-80).
Caught between element and whole, Boas never developed a consistently
holistic or structuralist conception of culture. But the questions he raised
were to prove so suggestive that "much of twentieth-century American an
thropology may be viewed as the working out in time of various implications
in Boas' own position" (Stocking 1974a: 17). This "working out" was effected
by Boas' students. What Sapir contributed, among other things, was a re
markable, and iconoclastic, theory of culture-a theory that is structuralist
in its analysis of formal patterning, but transcends structuralism in its con
cern for individual experience, creativity, and the possibility of change.
At a rather early point in his career Sapir became interested in appre
hending subjectivities rather than developing abstracted overviews of some
"objective" reality. That is, Sapir sought techniques that would allow an
observer to portray from the "inside" the realities that other individuals un
derstand. These interests are expressed most completely in his writings on
art. At the same time Sapir elaborated his critique of the "superorganic"
concept, arguing that to analyze the social aspects of human behavior did
not require the analyst to posit a level of (social) reality that transcends
human individuals. These insights are combined in the issue that most inter
ested Sapir at this time, the relationship between individual creativity and
given cultural forms. Again this is a theme dominant in the writings on art.
Moreover, Sapir's concern with the creative processes o{ art, as well as his
work in linguistics, led him to another realization-the understanding that
a cultural pattern, a patterning of values and attitudes, would be something
like the formal patterns of art and language (Hymes 1970:260-61). These
two sets of insights-concerning the relation of individual and culture, on
the one hand, and the nature of formal patterning, on the other-are brought
together by the notion of unconscious patterning. It is the idea that individ
211
uals "intuit" pattern, and that this intuition allows them to participate in
patterned social action without at the same time being coerced by "society"-allows them, in short, to communicate with others in interaction without
thereby surrendering the possibility of creativity-that cements a theory of
culture accounting both for given form (culture} and the subjective experience of individuals. And though this idea of unconscious patterning is elaborated with respect to an anthropological conception of culture only in 1927,
much of it, too, is present in the earlier writings on art. Hence an examination of Sapir's artistic concerns will deepen our understanding of the origins
of his mature theory of culture.
It will also show something of how his thought developed. The question
of "how" in cultural processes was an important one for Sapir, touching on
issues of form and meaning, individuality and creativity. Hymes has shown
that Sapir initially separated questions of "how" and questions of "what"linguistic form (how} merely expressing cultural content (what}-whereas
in his later thought he brought them together-form actively shaping content, language creating world view (1970:258-64). But this is only part of
the story, for Sapir's mature formulation of these issues grew out of an artistic
praxis and the theorizing associated with it. In addition to the questions of
"how" and "what," Sapir posed problems in terms directly reminiscent of
Boas' dilemmas in the epistemology of science. Sapir sought in art a way to
unite form and feeling, cultural givens and subjective experience-a way to
reconcile what Boas had called physical science, with its "aesthetic" search
for impersonal laws, and an "affective" understanding of individual human
hearts. In brief, in art Sapir attempted to come to terms with both his scientific and his romantic yearnings, to reconcile what he portrayed, in one of
his poems, as the dainty man and the hungry man within himself. To contextualize this conflict, which for Sapir was both personal and philosophical,
we need to know something of his intellectual biography.
The record of Sapir's published work suggests that 1916 was a turning point
in his intellectual development. That year saw the publication of his famous
monograph Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture, his last major
work purely in the Boasian mold. The same year also produced a paper on
the Australian composer Percy Grainger and an essay on American culture
in response to one by John Dewey. In 1917, in addition to technical papers
and reviews, we find two reviews of psychoanalytic works, reviews of a series
of novels and of a musician's biography, and two essays on literary theory, all
published in The Dial. From 1918 through 1921 Sapir's output of this latter
type of writing approximately equaled that of specifically anthropological papers, and during 1922 the number of literary and general reviews, published
in such magazines as The Dial, The Freeman, The New Republic, and The
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RICHARD HANDLER
Nation, far outweighed the number of technical pieces. More important, it is

in the non-professional writing-and in the brilliant little book on Language
he published in 1921 for a general intellectual audience-that we get a sense
of inspiration and creativity, as compared to the more routine analyses in
linguistics and ethnology. After 1922 Sapir's literary pieces become more and
more incidental, his last literary reviews appearing in 1928. The publication
of Sapir's poetry follows the same course. His first published poems, and his
only volume of poetry (Dreams and Gibes), appeared in 191 7. From 1918 to
192 7 he published a substantial number of poems each year; his last four
published poems appeared in 1931. From this "trait analysis" alone, then, we
can guess that for Sapir the late teens were a time of shifting interests and
even "profound rethinking," as Preston has put it (1980:36 7; cf. Newman
1951:181-82). What Sapir rethought were some of the premises of Boasian
science and his intellectual commitment to them.
Sapir began his graduate training in anthropology under Franz Boas at
Columbia University, receiving the Ph.D. in 1909. During his years of graduate study he did linguistic and ethnological fieldwork among several Native
American groups, and was affiliated in research and instructional capacities
with the University of California and the University of Pennsylvania. After
a student career "marked by great phonetic virtuosity, enormous bursts of
energy, great hopes" (Voegelin 1952:2), he accepted appointment in 1910 as
chief of the division of anthropology in the Geological Survey of Canada, a
position he was to hold until 1925.
The record of Sapir's first years in Ottawa shows that he immediately established a Boasian program in ethnological and linguistic research, as well
as in his work with the ethnological collection of the Victoria Memorial
Museum. During the first years of his appointment Sapir carried out this
program without much apparent dissatisfaction. His publications from 1910
until 1916 are primarily concerned with his work on North American languages, as well as ethnological data he had gathered while doing linguistic
research. His major theoretical contribution was Time Perspective, in which
he used techniques developed in historical linguistics to elaborate a methodology for the reconstructive work of ethnology. Time Perspective summarized and even exhausted the Boasian paradigm, and, when compared to
Sapir's later essays in anthropological theory, seems out of character for him.
For example, in Time Perspective Sapir claimed "historical understanding" as
the "properly ethnological goal," and eschewed the study ~f individuals for
that of "generalized events and individualities" (1916:391-92). He echoed
Boas in warning against the imposition of theoretical categories onto raw
data where knowledge of historical connections is lacking. He repeatedly
spoke of culture in terms of "elements" and "complexes" that have come
together in elaborate historical processes to form whole cultures. The "struc-
213
ture" of a "culture complex" was of interest because the analyst could use it
to recover chronology, since more loosely "associated" elements could be presumed to be more recent (405). Sapir spoke of cultural survivals and origins,
but made only passing reference to the influence of individuals on culture.
Though his application of linguistic techniques to ethnological problems took
him beyond Boas in methodological daring, the piece remains fundamentally
Boasian in orientation and conception. In view of the fact that this monograph adheres so closely to Boasian orthodoxy-indeed, giving it its most
elegant expression with respect to the problems treated-we should bear in
mind how soon after its publication Sapir was to strike out in new directions.
The first strong expressions of intellectual dissatisfaction on the part of
Sapir are to be found in his letters of 1916 to Lowie. We might well imagine
that as Sapir came out from under the direct supervision of Boas, and as his
comparative analyses of American languages pushed his thinking well beyond
what the master would sanction, elements of intellectual rebellion began to
crystallize into a new orientation. Preston suggests (1980:368-69) that Sapir
was stimulated in this by his friendship with Radin, and reproduces a long
letter that Sapir received in 1914, in which Radin castigated Boas for his
methodological timidity and lack of historical imagination: Boas was far too
concerned with reconstructing chronological accounts of the development of
primitive culture, and with "certain general factors, like dissemination, convergent evolution, independent origin, etc." An ethnology exclusively animated by such interests would fail to fulfill its promise; anthropologists should
concentrate instead on "sympathetic interpretation" and "intimate" portrayals of daily life (369).
Whatever Sapir's immediate response to Radin's ideas, he began to raise
similar doubts in his letters to Lowie. The record of their regular correspondence begins in 1916 (Lowie 1965). According to Lowie, Sapir's position in
Canada, "judged purely on its potentialities for scientific research ... was
ideal" (2). However, Sapir felt isolated from the academic and artistic centers
of the American cities, and became increasingly dissatisfied with anthropological work. There are indications that he felt himself to have been cast
off-presumably by Boas-in his placement in Ottawa. He envied those
among his peers who had landed academic jobs in the States, and resented
Boas' criticisms of his linguistic work. With the onset of his wife's physical
and mental illness as early as 1913, there were also difficulties in his personal
life. Sapir's first non-technical publications (in 1916 and 1917) show traces
of profound moral questioning in addition to social criticism. He was particularly appalled by the World War and expressed his pessimism and sense of
horror in his poetry. The war also affected his research program, the public
funding for which was drastically reduced as money was diverted to the war
effort (Murray 198la:65). These troubled aspects of Sapir's situation com-
214
RICHARD HANDLER
bined to foster anxiety and resentment, frustration and boredom. He sought

an outlet in musical and literary pursuits. A letter of August 12, 1916, tells
Lowie that "I do practically no anthropology out of office hours, most of my
time being taken up with music" (Lowie 1965:20}.
This remark must have elicited a query from Lowie, for in the next letter
Sapir explains his musical interests in a long passage that is worth reproduc
ing in full:
Why do I engage in music? I suppose I could call it recreation and be done
with it, but I do not think it would be quite sincere for me to put off your query
like that. Whether or not I have "missed my vocation" is not for me to decide.
I feel I can do not only eminently satisfactory linguistic work but also satisfactory ethnological work, as I proved to myself in my two Nootka trips. I have
now an enormous amount of linguistic and ethnological data on my hands from
various tribes, certainly enough to keep me busy for at least five years of con
centrated work. But (and here's the rub and the disappointment) I don't some
how seem to feel as much positive impulse toward disgorging as I should. A
certain necessary enthusiasm, particularly towards ethnological data and problems, seems lacking-lacking beyond a mild degree, anyway. I somehow feel
in much of my work that I am not true to my inner self, that I have let myself
be put off with useful but relatively unimportant trifles at the expense of a
development of finer needs and impulses, whatever they are. A chafing of the
spirit, the more annoying because there is externally so little excuse for it! I
know, as no one else can, that it is this profound feeling of dissatisfaction and
disillusionment which hardly ever leaves me, that is mainly (not altogether,
for I must waste much time on office routine, but mainly) responsible for my
relatively unproductive scientific career up to date. To amass data, to write
them up, to discuss "problems"-how easy, but cui bona? Do not misunderstand
me. My "cui bono'' is not grounded in any philosophy of relative values. I have
no theoretical quarrel with anthropology. The fault lies with me. Being as I
am, for better or for worse, the life of an Americanist does not satisfy my
inmost cravings. To be frank, I do not believe this discontent is due chiefly to
the unhuman aspect of our discipline, to its narrow range of appeal. I am afraid
I may have too much of the "shut-in" personality about me to feel that sort of
limitation as keenly as a Smith or perhaps yourself. I find that what I most care
for is beauty of form, whether in substance or, perhaps even more keenly, in
spirit. A perfect style, a well-balanced system of philosophy, a perfect bit of
music, a clearly-conceived linguistic organism, the beauty of mathematical relations-these are some of the things that, in the sphere of the immaterial,
have most deeply stirred me. How can the job-lot of necessarily unco-ordinated
or badly co-ordinated facts that we amass in our field-work satisfy such long
ings? Is not the incessant poring over of such facts a punishment to the liberty
loving spirit? Does not one most "waste time" when he is most industrious?
And yet one always feels relieved and a bit pleased to have done with some bit
of "scientific" work. I do not really believe that my temperament is so very
215
unscientific either, for I am surely critical and almost unreasonably analytical.

A scientific spirit but an aesthetic will or craving! A sort of at-cross-purposeswith-oneself type of temperament that entails frequent inhibitions, frustrations, anything but a smooth flow of self-satisfied and harmonious effort. Shucks!
my self analysis may be all wrong, but the inner dissatisfaction is there.
(Lowie 1965:20-21)
A letter is, typically, spontaneously dictated and thus may reveal, not
carefully thought-out analyses, but deeper, more tangled and even contradictory motives. Here are several apparently simple dichotomies-art and science, harmonious form and a formless assemblage of heterogeneous elements,
the inner life and the outer-but they cannot be taken as simple oppositions.
They cross-cut one another and, as the letter reveals, Sapir was hard put to
choose among them. Certain oppositions seem relatively clear-Sapir chafes
at the sacrifice of inner needs to outer trifles, he seeks harmonious form and
recoils from formlessness, he feels tom between an aesthetic will and a scientific spirit. But what, we might ask, is art, and what is science? For Sapir
science is ethnology and linguistics, but he is less sure of his ethnological
than his linguistic science, the latter being the more technically precise of
the two. Science is also data amassed and "written up," but what good are
such activities compared to beauty of form? Yet formal beauty must be discoverable by science as well, for who but a scientist can apprehend linguistic
and mathematical relations? Reading from another point of view, we might
say that Sapir is here expressing frustration that ethnology is not linguistics:
what he can accomplish in the latter-the discovery of form-eludes him in
the former. But this formulation is immediately cross-cut by another, for linguistics and ethnology are taken together as science-it is both linguistic
and ethnological data that Sapir has "on his hands," ready to be "disgorged."
And these two-combined as "our discipline," the science of anthropologyhave an "unhuman aspect." Is, then, the beauty of form characteristic of such
human endeavors as music, philosophy, and mathematics unhuman? Is Sapir
at once attracted to it and repelled by it? (cf. 1924b:l59).
At this point it might be useful to recall Boas' discussion of the two types
of science, physical and historical. Physical science depended upon aesthetic
impulses, historical science upon affective ones. "Aesthetic" for Boas meant
regularity and generality, whereas the affectivity of history, like that of art,
sought uniqueness. Perhaps Sapir's dilemma was that he was drawn to aesthetic phenomena (form) in an affective way ("what I most care for"). At any
rate, Sapir's crisis was not merely personal: he was struggling with implications that contradict one another within a single scientific discipline. Radin
also had been threatened by the horns of the dilemma: he yearned for "a real
human science instead of one of bones and dust" (Preston 1980:369). Or
consider Margaret Mead's recollection of how Boasian anthropology was taught
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RICHARD HANDLER
by Boas' students around 1920: on the one hand was Alexander Goldenweiser, "mercurial, excited by ideas about culture, but intolerant of the petty
exactions of field work, . . . working on the first book by an American anthropologist which was to present cultures briefly as wholes"; on the other
hand, Elsie Clews Parsons, from whom "students learned that anthropology
consisted of an enormous mass of little bits of material, carefully labeled by
time, place, and tribe-the fruits, arid and bitter, of long, long hours of labor
and devotion" (1959:8). Among the Boasians, then, there was the duty to
study culture elements and a desire to discover culture wholes-an inhuman
science in place and a human science on the horizon. Or, perhaps, there was
science and there was art, fighting, as Mead put it, "uneven battles for pre
eminence." To get a better sense of how the match stood with Sapir, let us
tum to his poetry and literary essays.
Sapir's poems are short and of the lyric variety. His essays and reviews show
that he studied the important American and British poets of his day, but
because he experimented continuously with poetic technique he never developed a fixed style from which it would be possible to trace strong influences. As for general content, one finds an intriguing blend of emotion,
anthropological insight, social criticism, and a touch of the Orientalism of
the period-though Sapir's poetic exotica are drawn more often from the
"primitive" peoples of ethnology than from the East of classical and Orien
talist scholars.
Many of Sapir's poems reflect great personal anguish and doubt. Sometimes such feelings are unmotivated and unexplained:
Silence, silence,
Dearest friend, I pray youFor it is not merry in my soul.
(1917a:54) 1
Other poems imply, or frankly discuss, the reasons for melancholy. There is
a general alienation from the "dismal efficiency-mongering" of the modem,
bureaucratized world (65), and, related to this, dismay at hypocrisy, particularly that of religion and patriotism. Several poems express horror and outrage at the war, and many suggest the personal tragedy associated with Sapir's
wife's illness. What is of most interest for our present purposes,. however, is a
theme that may be summarily described as the gap between inner and outer
human realities.
Dreams and Gibes opens with "The Mislabeled Menagerie" (9-10): the
!. References to poems taken from Dreams and Gibes (1917a) contain only page numbers.
References to poems from other sources are indicated by year as well.
217
poet visits a zoo and finds himself in a "Topsyturvydom" where the monkey
is labeled Ursus, the camel ostrich, and so on. His initial suspicion is that
some "fussing pedagogue" has attempted a "new labeling scheme," but a zookeeper informs him that the animals have been moved so recently that there
has been no time to change their signs. The poet then realizes that this
mislabeling phenomenon, temporary in the zoo, applies permanently in the
lives of many people: the grocer is a statesman, the mayor a grocer, the
clergyman a simpleton. Because Sapir felt the arrangement of poems in a
collection was significant (cf. Mead 1959: 172), we may assume the initial
placement of "The Mislabeled Menagerie" announces a major theme in Dreams
and Gibes. The following sixteen poems (there are fifty-three in the collection) speak directly of people who are not what they seem, and most of the
others suggest related problems.
Among those people who are not what they seem, whose inner life differs
from their "outward shell" (21), is the poet. Self-doubt and a feeling of being
at odds with one's true self are implied in several blunt, sarcastic pieces aimed
at academicians. The metaphysician is a dog chasing his tail, the philosopher
constructs daily a new system to explain the universe. "Professors in WarTime" chides those who stand aloof, refusing to apply their wisdom and skill
"while all the world is soaked in blood and groans with pain" (27). Other
poems develop this theme of inner dissatisfaction in more personal ways.
"Helpless Revolt" (64) expresses irreducible rebellion against an unyielding
reality:
I have no respect for what is.
I can not mend and patch,
I can not bend my soul to the twist
That will make it fit with the brutal fact,
That will make it yield to the tyrant world.
My soul stands firm.
It would annihilate all in its rage and build anew,
Rather than bend.
Therefore it breaks, and the brutal fact remains
And the tyrant world wags on.
And "Reproof," a beautiful sonnet, has the poet mock his own soul for shunning life and light, losing itself in "endless, brooding self-pursuit" (1918a:l02).
Yet other poems go beyond brooding and rebellion to suggest personal
approaches that enable one to make sense of, or to come to terms with,
difficult human realities. "The Dainty and the Hungry Man" portrays two
such approaches: that of the aesthete, for whom beauty alone matters, and
that of the Hungry Man who craves "the crassness of life" (35-37). One
might guess that the poet sides with the latter, for in the dialogue (which is
218
RICHARD HANDLER
the poem) he consistently allows him the last word. But if this poem expresses self-reflection on Sapir's part, as I think it must, one would be nearer
the mark to assume that the two characters represent conflicting aspects of
the poet's personality.
"I distil from the crassness of life I What matters alone-Beauty. I Take
it." Such is the philosophy of the Dainty Man. Yet he is portrayed coldly,
critically, as if he were heartless-the preciousness of his taste suggests a
Byzantine formalism untouched by human passion. Yet despite the pejorative
tone taken towards the Dainty Man, Sapir could not flatly condemn his faith
in beauty. As he had written Lowie: "what I most care for is beauty of form"
(Lowie 1965:20).
On the other hand, the Hungry Man voices passions and themes that run
consistently through Sapir's writing (and not only the literary writing) of this
time. The Hungry Man shuns the delicacies offered him by his opposite,
seeking instead "the thick of life," the tangle of "crowds in the street." This
image of the crowd appears frequently in Sapir's poetry and represents the
exterior surface of the urban world. The poet's typical response to this outward spectacle is to ask what hidden passions animate its participants. Such
is the credo of the Hungry Man:
And more to me than thoughts serene are the strivings and turmoils of the
heart,
And more to me than lovely images is the wayward current of life.
We might summarize his attitude by saying that the Hungry Man seeks to
experience the apparently disorganized, meaningless assemblage of detail and
event that constitutes the surface of human life, yet at the same time to
understand the inner truths of the heart. But the accomplishment of both
aims can be achieved only through a correct appreciation of that which the
Dainty Man worships yet misunderstands: beauty of form. Or, put another
way, to understand formal beauty ought not to be an end in itself, but should
lead to a better understanding of human existence. The Dainty Man and the
Hungry Man must be merged to become the artist, the creator who works
with formal beauty to communicate the truths of the heart.
Sapir's literary essays of this period explore these same issues of outer and
inner realities and their connection to aesthetic form. In this. they prefigure
his treatment of such problems in more purely anthropological terms in the
later essays on culture theory. In 1917, the year of publication of Dreams and
Gibes, Sapir published two essays in literary theory, "The Twilight of Rhyme"
and "Realism in Prose Fiction." The former counters the preciousness of the
Dainty Man, while the latter addresses the problems of the Hungry Man.
That is, the first essay discusses the relationship of aesthetic form to self-
219
expression, and thus justifies beauty and art in humanly significant terms.
The second proposes a method for achieving both an understanding of human hearts and an objective grasp of the outer surfaces of life.
Sapir's antagonists in "The Twilight of Rhyme" might seem at first to differ
from the Dainty Man, for the imperialist orator (who ruins fiery oratory with
hackneyed rhyming poetry) and Max Eastman (who campaigns against "Lazy
Verse") have passion on their side. But their passion is strangled by the out
moded forms chosen to express it. According to Sapir, Eastman is correct in
arguing that the "technical limitations" of an artistic medium have "disciplinary value which is of direct aesthetic benefit" (1917b:99). He errs, however, in valuing a particular technique (rhyme), appropriate in certain cultural contexts but by no means universally, instead of the general principle
of the necessity of technical limitations. Sapir then outlines his theory of the
relationship between individual creativity and traditional formal means. He
argues that a delicate balance must be maintained between tradition and
innovation, inherited forms and creativity. Otherwise, formalism and externality overcome sincerity and self-expression:
Just as soon as an external and purely formal aesthetic device ceases to be felt
as inherently essential to sincerity of expression, it ceases to remain merely a
condition of the battling for self-expression and becomes a tyrannous burden,
a perfectly useless fetter. . . . Perfection of form is always essential, but the
definition of what constitutes such perfection cannot, must not, be fixed once
for all. The age, the individual artist, must solve the problem ever anew, must
impose self-created conditions, perhaps only dimly realized, of the battle to be
fought in attaining self-expression. It would be no paradox to say that it is the
blind acceptance of a form imposed from without that is, in the deepest sense,
"lazy," for such acceptance dodges the true formal problem of the artist-the
arrival, in travail and groping, at that mode of expression that is best suited to
the unique conception of the artist.
(99-100)
This argument, a cornerstone in Sapir's theory of art, will become central

to his theory of culture as well. It brings together two seemingly contradictory
forces-cultural form and individual expression-and makes each the condition of the other: given forms are necessary to self-expression, but when
the individual works with form instead of merely yielding to it, he changes
it. As Sapir says, in true art the formal problem must be solved "ever anew."
Thus the pursuit of beauty becomes an attempt to achieve self-expression
through creation of form rather than the merely static admiration of beauty
espoused by the Dainty Man. That Sapir guided his artistic practice by his
theory is evident in his critical judgments, and in the curious fact that most
of his poetry before the publication of "The Twilight of Rhyme" is unrhymed,
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RICHARD HANDLER
whereas after 1917 he experiments, not only with rhyme, but with such clas
sical devices as the sonnet form (cf. Murray 198la:67).
The second essay in literary theory of 1917 is "Realism in Prose Fiction."
Sapir begins by asserting that "prose fiction is the vehicle par excellence for a
realistic ideal." He distinguishes two aspects of this ideal, "outer and inner
realism" or, in words nearer to those of the Hungry Man, "the flow and depth
of life." He then asserts the primacy of the second aspect. The secret of
"realistic illusion" lies in the ease with which a given literary form enables
its audience to identify with the characters portrayed-"to live through,"
from the inside, their experiences. In conventional prose fiction the narrator
enters the minds of any and all of his characters. In other words, he "claims
an unconditional omniscience" that "goes by the name of objectivity." Yet
this apparently objective technique threatens the realistic illusion, for it strains
the reader's capacity for identification with the characters (1917c:503).
In response to this tension, a newer form of fiction, animated by "a subtler
understanding of reality," has emerged. In this technique the author confines
his vision to the psyche of one character, leaving the presentation of other
characters as a function of this dominant vantage point. This narrative stance
involves a trade-off in truth value: what the reader can learn of secondary
characters is more frequently erroneous than true. This is because the "inner
experiences" of secondary characters "can only be inferred, sometimes truly
(that is, in a manner roughly coinciding with the viewpoints of their own
selves), more often mistakenly." Yet in spite of this, or perhaps because of it,
the technique just described is truer to our experience as we know it and is
thus more realistic than that of the omniscient narrator. It follows that the
objective and the subjective are reversed-an apparently difficult position
that Sapir is prepared to defend:
At this point the reader may object that while this method pretends to be
sweepingly realistic, to aim to grasp a bit of life and imprison it in narrative
form, it yet is the merest subjectivism, an egoist's dream in which everything
is hopelessly out of plumb, in which the valid relations of the objective world
are badly muddled. Nor would he be altogether wrong. And yet, what is life,
as we really and individually know it, but precisely "an egoist's dream in which
the valid relations of the objective world are badly muddled"! Objectivity, one
might say, is romance. But he would need to add that we crave and demand
this romantic objectivity, this mad seeing of things "as they really are," and
that the literary artist has therefore a perfect right to choose between rigorous
realism, the method that is frankly subjective, and objective realism, the romance of reality.
(1917c:S04)
Thus these two techniques, rigorous and objective realism, reveal different truths. Objective realism-which is "romance"-aims for the truth of an
221
overview that tries somehow to account, in an orderly way, for the lives of
many people. Rigorous realism-"frankly subjective"-aims at an inner truth,
an accurate portrayal of the way one person might see the world. Yet Sapir is
not content merely to juxtapose the two. Impelled, perhaps, by his scientific
spirit, he offers a third technique for prose fiction that would make possible
"a profound and all-embracing realistic art." He proposes that a given tale be
told from the point of view of several characters, but each time completely.
By being subjective in several ways the narrator could at last be truly objective: "for may not objectivity be defined as the composite picture gained by
laying a number of subjectivities on top of one another . . . ?" According to
Sapir, such a technique corresponds to an inductive process that guarantees
"a steadily growing comprehension of the meaning of the whole" (1917c:505).
Thus it satisfies the two desires of the Hungry Man, for it brings knowledge
both of individual hearts and the collective life. And it speaks to the epistemological dilemmas _of Boasian science, for it allows an observer to study
subjective phenomena inductively. As such, it suggests something of the "science of interpersonal relations" that Sapir was to envision in his last essays
(1939:579).
Thus far, in two literary essays of 1917, we have two elements of Sapir's
emerging theory of culture-the question of form and creativity, and the
concern for understanding human interaction from multiple "inner" points
of view. In the same year Sapir published his famous critique of Kroeber's
"superorganic," which gives us a third element in the nascent culture theory.
"Do We Need a 'Superorganic'?" is written for a professional audience, but
Sapir's concern for artistic creativity, and for "striking and influential personalities" (1917d:443), would seem to motivate the argument. The essay dis
cusses the distinction between the "historical" and "conceptual" sciences,
and Sapir cites, not Boas, but the German philosopher Rickert, to whom he
acknowledges an explicit debt (447). Sapir argues that individual and social
behavior can be distinguished only analytically, for all behavior is the behavior of individuals. Whether or not a particular item of behavior is taken to
be social or individual depends upon the interests of the analyst, and his
choice is thus "arbitrary" with respect to the behavior in question (442). It
follows that there can be no such thing as a superorganic level of reality that
coerces individuals and nullifies their creative possibilities: human beings can
always change the course of history, can always adapt given forms to their
own ends. Thus this essay addresses, from the anthropological side, the issues
of culture and creativity that interested Sapir the artist.
In literary reviews and essays of the next several years Sapir continues to
work with these issues. Again and again he speaks of true art as subjective
truth externalized in unique form, a formula that unites the themes of 1917.
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RICHARD HANDLER
In his critical analyses he sharpens his sense of what this means by examining
the degrees to which these elements of art are present or absent in the work
of a particular artist or technique. Thus, for example, the "later work" of
Edgar Lee Masters is said to lack the technical means necessary to give
expression to feeling. The poet is said to have forgotten that "an unembodied
conception is, in art, no conception at all" (1922a:334). On the other hand,
there are works that are purely technical, that express neither thought nor
emotion, and these too are destined for oblivion: "Craftsmanship, no matter
how pleasing or ingenious, cannot secure a musical composition immortality;
it is inevitably put in the shade by the technique of a later age" (1918b:491).
In general, Sapir seems to have won-perhaps in the writing of his own
poems-a greater commitment to the notion that technical discipline is necessary for self-expression: "Perhaps it is precisely the passionate temperament
cutting into itself with the cold steel of the intellect that is best adapted to
the heuristic employment of rhyme. The temperament and the triumphant
harnessing of form belong, both of them, to the psychology of sublimation
following inhibition" (1920a:498). If we remember that Sapir had previously
championed the cause of unrhymed verse, and that he had since begun to
use rhyme, it is difficult not to imagine these lines as a bit of self-analysis.
They give us a picture of Sapir working out a theory of art, and of culture, as
he tried to understand, through introspective analysis, his own artistic praxis.
He goes on to call for a new science of aesthetics that will "get down to the
very arduous business of studying the concrete processes of artistic production
and appreciation" (499).
Sapir's discussions of aesthetic principles were complemented by analyses
of particular artistic products, and in these he could develop his technical
understanding of formal patterning. It is difficult to tell what effect his pre
vious experience in analyzing linguistic patterning had on his analysis of
artistic techniques. However, the theory of unconscious patterning-which
he sketched in Language (192la:55-58) and elaborated in a seminal paper
four years later (1925)-occupied Sapir as a problem in poetry as early as
1918 (cf. Sapir 1919; 192lb:213). 2 It is worked out in some detail in a remarkable paper on poetic form, "The Musical Foundations of Verse," published in 1921. This paper contains, first, a sophisticated structural analysis
of poetic "sectioning," showing how various rhythmic elements defined by
mutual opposition, create the "appreciable psychological pulses" of a "rhythmic contour" (192lb:220-21). Second, it relates these rhythmic oppositions
to the ability of the listener to perceive them, if only intuitively or subconsciously.
2. Murray points out, however, that Sapir may well have thought through the basic argu
ment of his phonemic theory as early as 1913 (198lb:l0); and the idea of unconscious patterning
is already present in Boas in 1911 (cf. Modjeska 1968).
223
"Not all that looks alike to the eye is psychologically comparable," Sapir tells
us, and thus "the same passage is both prose and verse according to the rhythmic receptivity of the reader or hearer" (215-16, 226). Here, then, we have
the combination of a structural analysis of formal patterning with a concern
for the subjective perception of pattern in the minds of those who use itthe essence, in short, of Sapir's phonemic theory and an important component in his final theory of culture. Thus by 1921 we have the major elements
of Sapir's mature theory of culture present in his writings on art.
How were the ideas and insights developed in the writings on art worked into
Sapir's more narrowly anthropological writing? We might begin with Sapir's
two reviews of Lowie's Primitive Society, for these show both the degree to
which Sapir remained a Boasian and the degree to which he was reworking
Boasian themes to fit his emergent approach. Sapir praises Lowie's book for
presenting the "American school" of anthropology to the public. This school
is defined by inductive historical research, which it opposes to evolutionary
speculation and psychological reductionism:
We learn to see a given primitive society ... as a complex of historical processes that is only to be unraveled, and then in insignificant degree, through a
minute weighing of the concrete, interacting features of that society and through
the patient following out of the numerous threads that inevitably bind it to its
geographical neighbors.
(l 920b:3 78)
Though this recalls Boas' distributional studies of folklore traits, or Parsons'

"careful assemblage and analysis of details" (Mead 1959:8), Sapir also implies
that the historical process is human rather than superorganic: "No one that
has watched the gradual, tortuous emergence of a social institution from the
warp and woof of circumstance can feel it in his heart to say that he is but
beholding the determinate unfolding of . . . whatever psychological concept
be accepted for guidance" (1920b:378). The unstated counterpart to this
historical critique of various reductionisms would be the role of the individual in the creation of culture. Culture itself is described as "the fine art of
living" (1920c:332). And in his approach to culture the anthropologist must
maintain, as Lowie has done, that "humanness of attitude" which "is simply
a reflection of his human contacts with primitive folk" (1920b:377).
The implications of such an attitude are more fully spelled out in Sapir's
review of American Indian Life, edited by Parsons. Sapir praises this group of
fictional sketches of individual Native Americans precisely because they attempt to portray an exotic way of life from the point of view of the individual
who lives it, rather than in an objective overview of the culture. The latter
method highlights the traits of a way of life and, in so doing, obscures the
224
RICHARD HANDLER
reality of that life as those who live it might understand it. Sapir had earlier
(1917e:424) denigrated such an approach as "item-listing," and here he spells
out what is wrong with it: "It is precisely because the exotic is easily mistaken
for subject, where it should be worked as texture, that much agreeable writing on glamorous quarters of the globe so readily surfeits a reader who possesses not merely an eye, but what used to be called a soul" (1922b:570).
Writers tend to concentrate on the surface of an alien way of life because
immediately palpable exotic externality commands their attention as the proper
object of discourse. But stopping there, they fail to explore the "individual
consciousness" of those who experience that life, though this is "the only
true concern of literary art." The review thus shows how thoroughly Sapir
had assimilated the problem of ethnological description to that of "realism
in prose fiction." As he himself asks, "can the conscious knowledge of the
ethnologist be fused with the intuitions of the artist?" (570; cf. Nyce 1977).
These sympathetic reviews of works by Boasian anthropologists should be
compared to the Time Perspective essay to gain a fuller appreciation of the
development of Sapir's thought between 1916 and 1922. One other paper of
this period should be considered as well, Sapir's famous essay on "Culture,
Genuine and Spurious." By 1918 Sapir had almost certainly completed it,
though it did not appear in final form until 1924. Written for a general audience, it is Sapir's first attempt to present a theory of culture. The essay
contains the first rigorous definition of the Boasian conception of culture as
the genius of a people, seen in terms of the patterning of values. At the same
time, it goes beyond a merely "scientific" definition of culture to include
aesthetic and moral considerations. In the discussion of these latter issues
Sapir sketches his vision of cultural harmony, thus presenting the first explicit
statement concerning what came commonly to be known as "cultural integration."3
Sapir begins by considering three common understandings of the meaning
of the word culture. First, he distinguishes a technical usage in which culture
refers to "any socially inherited element in the life of man, material or spiritual" (1924a:309). To avoid confusion, Sapir rejects the label "culture" for
this Tylorian assemblage and speaks instead of "civilization." Second, he examines (and finds wanting) the popular notion of culture as individual refinement based on selected acquisitions of intellect and manner. Sapir next
goes to some length to spell out a third definition-perhaps because, as he
3. I base this claim for the originality of Sapir's formulations on Kroeber and Kluckhohn's
study (1952) of the culture concept. The claim of absolute priority is relatively insignificant, for
these were ideas "in the air." Sapir's contribution to their elaboration is incontestable, however,
as is his influence on colleagues working on the same problems.
THE DAINTY AND THE HUNGRY MAN: EDWARD SAP!R
225
says, "those who use it are so seldom able to give us a perfectly clear idea of
just what they themselves mean by culture" (310). This third usage-that of
the Boasians?-takes from the technical conception its emphasis on the group,
and from the popular notion the idea of a selection of those elements that
are "more significant in a spiritual sense than the rest." However, spiritual
significance is not dependent upon art, science, and religion-as adherents
to the second definition might assume-but, rather, upon pre-eminent attitudes and values, drawn from whatever domain:
We may perhaps come nearest the mark by saying that the cultural conception
we are now trying to grasp aims to embrace in a single term those general
attitudes, views of life, and specific manifestations of civilization that give a
particular people its distinctive place in the world. Emphasis is put not so much
on what is done and believed by a people as on how what is done and believed
functions in the whole life of that people, on what significance it has for
them. . . . Large groups of people everywhere tend to think and to act in
accordance with established and all but instinctive forms, which are in large
measure peculiar to it.
(311-12)
Here, then, we have the idea that a culture is a patterning of values that
gives significance to the lives of those who hold them, and, furthermore,
that people's participation in the pattern is "instinctive"-in other words,
unconscious. But Sapir does not stop there, for even this third definition is
merely "preliminary" (312). What interests him is the "genuine" culture, and
this is defined by features that are drawn directly from Sapir's work in poetics
and literary theory. First, in the genuine culture the patterning of values is
aesthetically harmonious. In other words, like a work of art the genuine
culture is formally perfected, or, in a later terminology, "integrated": "The
genuine culture is not of necessity either high or low; it is merely inherently
harmonious, balanced, self-satisfactory. It is the expression of a richly varied
and yet somehow unified and consistent attitude toward life" (314-15). Second, this perfection of form is "expressive"-it is the embodiment of living
thought, of values that people practice: "... if it (the genuine culture) builds
itself magnificent houses of worship, it is because of the necessity it feels to
symbolize in beautiful stone a religious impulse that is deep and vital; if it is
ready to discard instit11tionalized religion, it is prepared also to dispense with
the homes of institutionalized religion" (315).
There is a significant comparison to be drawn here to a key idea in Boas'
work-that of the secondary rationalization of unconscious formal patterns
(cf. Boas 1911:67). In his discussions of form and function Sapir follows Boas
in this, arguing that actors' appeals to function-or to ultimate truth-are
often mere rationalizations for actions whose origins are purely formal. Yet
the argument is expanded here to coincide with Sapir's theory of art. What
226
RICHARD HANDLER
is rationalized, and clung to, is "the dry rot of social habit, devitalized"
(1924a:315)-in other words, empty shells of formal patterning that no longer
express living values. Just as the genuine poet would discard a formal device
once it "ceases to be felt as inherently essential to sincerity of expression"
(1917b: 100), so the genuine culture discards institutional forms once they
have lost their expressive function. Thus it is that the genuine culture "is not
of necessity either high or low": as in art, what matters is the embodiment of
thought in form, not the sophistication of formal technique as such (cf. 1918b).
Finally, the genuine culture is expressive in another sense. It is "internal,"
as Sapir says; "it works from the individual to ends." In other words, its
ultimate values are built "out of the central interests and desires of its bearers," rather than imposed externally, from history and tradition down to the
passive individual (1924a:316). For Sapir this internal quality of a genuine
culture manifests itself in the relationship of individual creativity and cultural form. Here the similarity to his arguments on poetic rhyme is apparent.
"Creation," he argues, "is a bending of form to one's will, not a manufacture
of form ex nihilo" (3 21). A genuine culture provides the context of traditional
forms that nourishes each individual. At the same time it allows the individual to "swing free," to express his inner self through the creation of new forms
(322). By contrast, the external or spurious culture suffers either from "surfeit" or from "barrenness." In the first case it overwhelms the individual with
devitalized forms which, like trite rhyme in poetry, inhibit self-expression; in
the second it does not provide the support and stimulation necessary for the
realization of the individual will in acts of creativity. The spurious culture is
thus a land of tinkers, for it can neither nourish nor tolerate "the iconoclasms
and visions" of true artists.
Like the monograph on Time Perspective, "Culture, Genuine and Spurious" is in some respects uncharacteristic when compared to Sapir's later
essays on culture theory. The romantic formulation of the idea of cultural
harmony or integration gave way to the epistemological doubts expressed in
his argument against the superorganic. Sapir came to insist that cultural wholes
are analytic constructions having no reality, as wholes, as entities, in human
behavior. When anthropologists speak of "a culture" they refer to a pattern
or system that they themselves have constructed in the analysis of their data.
Culture in this sense is a model abstracted from human interaction. But most
anthropologists take a further step by reifying this model, treating it as a realworld existent and then using it to explain the very interactional data from
which it has been abstracted. Sapir calls this "a fatal fallacy with regard to
the objective reality of social and cultural patterns defined impersonally"
(1938:576). It is this fallacy which allows theorists to oppose the entities
"culture" and "individual" and pretend that the former controls the latter-
227
that is, that cultural norms constrain individuals, forcing them to behave in
socially accepted ways. 4
In contrast to this position, Sapir was to argue, not that culture does not
matter, as Ruth Benedict interpreted him (Mead 1959:201), but that "the
true locus of culture is in the interactions of specific individuals and, on the
subjective side, in the world of meanings which each one of these individuals
may unconsciously abstract for himself from his participation in these interactions" (1932:515). From this it follows that culture "varies infinitely" (518),
since each person can interpret any element of patterned interaction in a way
that will be psychologically satisfactory to him. Furthermore, because every
individual can convince others as to the validity of his interpretation, any
such interpretation has, "from the very beginning, the essential possibility of
culturalized behavior" (1938:572). It is thus misleading to speak of individuals "adjusting" to culture, for what they in fact do is to bend cultural givens
to their own ends, using them for creative self-expression and constructing
culture anew in the process.
However inadequate this summary of Sapir's later work may be, I hope
that it suffices to show the relationship between Sapir's art and his anthropology. In both, Sapir's first goal is to understand subjective realities, the
truths of experience as individuals know them. In both, he concludes that
an excessive concern with outer realism-the omniscient narrator or the
anthropologist who reifies culture-produces a distorted view of reality, however much it pretends to objectivity. In both, he favors instead a focus on
the interaction of subjectivities, on multiple inner points of view. Finally,
both treat formal givens-artistic convention or cultural values-as means
to self-expression rather than constraints upon individual freedom.
I have tried to show that in the practice of art Sapir worked out ideas that
later became central to his theory of culture. Such a presentation raises the
larger issues of intellectual influence and personal experience in the trajectory of a career. What, precisely, does it mean to say that Sapir worked out
ideas in the practice of art? Did the ideas originate in the praxis, or were
they present already, if merely latently, in his mind, accessible through some
combinations of experience? How are we to understand Sapir's poetic endeavors in the context of a larger biography? Does his poetry represent a
detour, motivated by frustrations and personal anxieties, from an otherwise
normal career, or ought Sapir's art to be seen as part of his anthropology?
When I became acquainted with Sapir's poetry I noticed first the thematic
4. Preston (1966) presents a fuller, and somewhat different, exposition of Sapir's understanding of the reality of structure.
228
RICHARD HANDLER
evidence of anthropological influence on poetic content. But as this essay

has shown, it makes as much sense to seek the influence of Sapir's poetry on
his anthropology as to expect to find things the other way around. Only
retrospectively can it be claimed that Sapir's poetry was merely a diversion:
in actuality, art and anthropology were united in the life and mind of one
man, and that life was lived in a particular intellectual milieu, at a time when
certain questions and ideas were in the air. In practice it is rarely possible to
construct the history-as a unilinear series of influences and events-of a
mind, a life, a milieu. The associations are too complex.
Take, for example, the question of intellectual influence, of the "origin"
of Sapir's ideas. In addition to Boas, whose influence on Sapir can hardly be
overestimated, who were the other thinkers that Sapir responded to? One
can, of course, cite Freud and Jung on the basis of Sapir's sympathetic reviews
of some of their works. But Sapir rarely acknowledged intellectual debts.
Thus it is all the more remarkable that he should explicitly avow a debt to
Croce in his book Language: "Among contemporary writers of influence on
liberal thought Croce is one of the very few who have gained an understanding of the fundamental significance of language. He has pointed out its close
relation to the problem of art. I am deeply indebted to him for this insight"
(l92la:iii). Both Modjeska (1968:346-47) and Hymes (1969;1970:261, 264)
have reasonably suggested that Croce's influence might have been important
in Sapir's intellectual development. Yet Hall has argued that Sapir could not
have been significantly influenced by Croce-that Sapir merely read into
Croce more than was actually there-interpreting him "in the light of his
own much ... deeper knowledge of linguistic structures" (1969:499). But,
however useful such an argument is to preserve Sapir's reputation for brilliance, it fails to account for the enthusiasm of Sapir's explicit acknowledgment. I would suggest that the problem vanishes when we understand that
influences are rarely specific causal connections. Even in the case of Sapir's
debt to Boas, the question is not so much one of where a person's ideas
originated but, rather, of why he chose to develop those ideas and not others,
and how-under what circumstances and in what directions-he developed
them. It is in response to the question of "how" that Sapir's art becomes
relevant. He once wrote to Benedict that poetic technique "comes to its own
only after great experience in handling words and forms" (Mead 1959:163).
That his understanding of linguistic form was intuitive is perhaps true, but
the development of his linguistic theory must have depended at least as much
on long experience working with particular languages as on native ability (cf.
Pike 1967:65). The same may be said of his theory of culture. He had at
hand the proto-theory of Boas, his developing ur..derstanding of language,
and inspiration from people like Croce, Rickert, Freud, and Jung. But it was
in the practice of art, where he could experience the living force of the
229
relationship between feeling and form, that he was stimulated to forge ideassome borrowed, some reformulated, some original-into his own theory of
culture.
In light of this argument we are led to reconsider the relationship between
Sapir's art and his anthropology. There is a surface plausibility to the claim
that Sapir's poetry was a temporary response to the difficulties of a particular
phase of his life. But poetry was not merely an outlet, an activity utterly
separated from Sapir's "serious" work. Several commentators have pointed
out that Sapir's poetry influenced the style of his anthropological writing
(Newman 1951:182-83; Voegelin 1952:2). In addition to this stylistic influence I have argued that we should recognize an influence on the substance
of his theory. This is, after all, what we would expect if we take seriously
Sapir's theory of culture: just as the form of a language or culture cannot be
separated from the content or thought that it embodies, so a self-conscious
creative praxis, as in music and poetry, must inevitably shape any deliberate
reflections on human creativity, as in a theory of culture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Chicago Group in the
History of the Social Sciences (sponsored by the Morris Fishbein Center for
the Study of the History of Science and Medicine) at the February 1981
meeting, and at the fourteenth annual meeting of the Cheiron Society in
June 1982. I would like to thank the participants in"those sessions for their
helpful comments. In addition, Franci Duitch, Dell Hymes, Richard Preston,
and George Stocking read the paper as it progressed through various versions,
and stimulated me with their critical suggestions.
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States. In Method and theary in linguistics, ed. P. Garvin, 249-325. The Hague.
Hymes, D., & J. Fought 1975. American structuralism. Cur. Trends Ling. 13:9031176.
Kroeber, A. L., & C. Kluckhohn. 1952. Culture: A critical review of concepts and
definitions. Paperback ed. Garden City, N.Y. (1965).
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Mead, M. 1928. Coming of age in Samoa. New York.
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Modjeska, C. N. 1968. A note on unconscious structure in the anthropology of Ed
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Murray, S. 0. 198la. The Canadian 'winter' of Edward Sapir. Historiog. Ling. 8:6368.
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Nyce, J. M. 1977. The relationship between literature and ethnography: The ex
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Pike, K. L. 1967. Language in relation to a unified theary of the structure of human
behavior. The Hague.
Preston, R. J. 1966. Edward Sapir's anthropology: Style, structure and method. Am.
Anth. 68:1105-27.
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Sapir, E. 1916. Time perspective in aboriginal American culture: A study in method.
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- - . 1917b. The twilight of rhyme. Dial 63:98-100.
- - . 1917c. Realism in prose fiction. Dial 63:503-06.
- - . 1917d. Do we need a 'superorganic'r Am. Anth. 19:441-47.
- - . 1917e. "Jean Christophe": An epic of humanity. [Review of Jean-Christophe,
by R. Rolland.] Dial 62:423-26.
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Voegelin, C. F. 1952. Edward Sapir. Word Study 27:1-3.
Normally, every volume of HOA will be organized around a particular theme

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anthropology. In addition to papers on particular institutions, we would welcome historical essays on museum collecting, the criteria of ethnographic
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photographic or cinematographic ethnography. The deadline for completed
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War II. Although any subdisciplinary aspect of anthropology, within any national tradition, may provide an appropriate focus, authors are encouraged
to consider their topics in relation to general cultural trends: intellectual,
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Among themes under consideration for subsequent volumes of HOA are:
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234
ically significant edition, with the date of the edition actually consulted added
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INDEX
Academic anthropology, 4, IO, 72, 73-74,
80, 81, 83, 84, 90, 121, 128, 171

Aesthetics and anthropology, 5, 215, 222,
227-29
Africanism, 122, 126, 152
Alexandre, Pierre, 148
Ambrym (New Hebrides), 175, 178, 189
American anthropology: nineteenth century,
54, 67; contrasted with British, 80; contrasted with French, 126; mentioned, 5,
13, 66, 129
American Ethnological Society, 54
American Indians. See Native Americans
Animism, 72, 91
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland, BO
Anthropologist as hero, 7, 109
Anthropology: crisis in, 3-4, 126; as universal or particular knowledge, 4; historical
approaches, 4; reflexive, 4; reinvention of,
4; synchronic approaches, 4; definition of,
5; national traditions, 5, 54, 70, 80, 87,
111, 126; four-field conception of, 5, 76;
as European self-knowledge, 6; methodological values of, 7; and science, 54, 66,
171-74; role in policy formation, 169-71;
and values, 173; received understandings
of, 196; and practice of art, 208-29 passim; as science and art, 215-16
Anthropometry, 86
Applied anthropology, in Micronesia, 169-74
Archeology, 5, 60, 61, 81, 90, 189
Armstrong, W. E., 176, 177, 185, 189
Arunta, 78-79, 91, 129. See also Gillen,
Frank; Spencer, W. B.
Australian aborigines: marriage classes, 78;
ethnography of, 87, 94-95
Australian National Research Council, 176
Baird, Spencer, 56
Bambara (West Africa), 122, 152
Bandelier, Adolph F., 60, 66
Barnett, H. G.: Oregon fieldwork, 157-58,
168; Salish fieldwork, 160; rejects mathematical treatment, 160-61; Palau fieldwork, 161-69; and cultural change, 168;
and Micronesian administration, 169-7.3;

on scientific aspects of anthropolORY. 17172; on science and values, 172; mentioned, 9
Barth,Fredrik, 189-90
Bastian, Adolph, 14, 104
Bate, W. J., 179
Bateson, Gregory, 129-30, 176
Benedict, Ruth, 66, 208, 227, 228
Berliner Tageblatt, 14, 21

Biological anthropology. See Physical anthropology
Boas, Franz: on Eskimo migration routes, 13,
15, 34, 49; university studies, 13, 16; early
interest in Eskimo, 13-15; preparations for
Baffin Island voyage, 14; plan for Baffin Island research, 15, 37; affianced to Marie
Krackowizer, 15-16; letter-diary, textual
aspects of, 16-17; on "alternating" Eskimo
terms, 17; as Doctora'dluk, 17, 24-25, 36;
life ambitions, 17, 3 7; initial reaction to
Eskimo, 21-22; glad Eskimo understand
English, 21-22, 42; adaptation to Eskimo
life, 21-24, 25-29, 32, 37, 40; refrains
from collecting skulls, 23; and Eskimo geographical knowledge, 24, 26-27, 31, 39;
surveys coastal areas, 24, 28-29, 33, 39,
43, 50; and death of Eskimo child, 24-25;
learns Eskimo games and songs, 24-25;
and diphtheria epidemic, 26, 36, 38; inconvenienced by dog disease, 27; irritation
with Eskimo taboos, 27; political views,
27, 3 7, 50; studies Kant, 29; yearning for
civilization, 29, 34-35, 37, 42, 44-45;
lost in blizzard, 30-32; collects Eskimo artifacts, 33; on truth, 33; on the relativity
of culture, 33, 38; on her:r.ensbildung, 33,
50; learns Eskimo language, 34, 40; learns
Eskimo tales, 35, 40, 42-43; revises research plan, 37, 44; ultimatum to Tyson,
38; iglu described, 40-42; gives food to Es
kimo, 42-43; considers his accomplishments, 48; snowblindness, 48; ethnographic and geographical research
appraised, 50; on need to preserve Eskimo
culture, 50; shift from geography to an-
235
236
INDEX
Boas, Franz (continued)

thropology, 50; marries Marie Krackowizer,
51; turns attention to Northwest coast, 51;
and B.A.A.S. Northwestern Committee,
73-74; critique of comparative method,
91; on culture, 208-9; epistemological
views of, 209, 211, 215, 221; on elements
and wholes, 209-10, 216; and culture history, 212-13; on secondary rationalization,
225; influence on Sapir, 228; mentioned,
9, 57,68, 74, 204
Boasian ~nthropology, 208-13, 215-16, 221,
224-25
Borneo, 77
British anthropology: contrasted with American, 5, 80, 111; social anthropology, 87,
111; theoretical malaiK (c. 1910), 94;
contrasted with French, 126
British Association for the Advancement of
Science: Committee on North-western
Tribes, 72-73; Ethnographic Survey of the
British Isles, 73n, 75-76; Australian meeting (1914), 95. See also Notes and Queries
on Anlhropology
Brooke, James (Rajah of Sarawak), 77
Brown, G. Or<ie, 88
Bruce, John, 77
Bucher, Karl, 94
Bunzel, Ruth, 66
Bureau of [American) Ethnology, 54-56, 6 7,
72
Byington, Cyrus, 54
Calame-Griaule, Genevieve, 123, 123n, 136,
153
Cambridge School, 80, 81, 90, 92, 94, 110
Cambridge University: Board of Anthropological Studies, 80; mentioned, 74, 76, 77,
80, 176
Cass, Lewis, 54
Categories: native, 90, 91, 106, 107; civilized, 90, 92; anthropological, 92, 95
Catlin, George, 54
Cesaire, Aime, 124
Chiapas (Mexico): Harvard project, 179
Codrington, R. H., 72, 76, 91
Cohen, Marcel, 121
College de France (University of Paris), 206
Colonial Office (Great Britain), 80
Colonial Situation, 4, 8-9, 112, 124, 126,

140, 142-43, 150, 151, 198, 199, 202
Columbia University, 208, 211
Conrad, Joseph, 71, 104, 142
Cooper, James Fenimore, 53
Croce, Benedetto, 228
Cultural change, 4, 150, 168, 189-90
Cultural exoticism, 7, 11, 122, 126, 152,
179, 197, 216, 223-24
Cultural integration, 57, 92, 129-30, 209,
224-25
Cultural preservation, 50, 199, 200, 201, 202
Cultural relativism, 33, 38, 130, 199, 201
Culture: anthropological concept, 208-11,
216; Sapir's theory of, 219, 222, 224-27
Culture areas, 122, 157-61
Culture elements, 209, 212-13, 216, 223
Culture history, 85, 87, 93, 104, 168, 21213, 223
Cushing, Frank H.: sojourn at Zuni pueblo,
54; initiated into Bow Priesthood, 56; obsession with Zuni, 56; pioneer of participant-observation, 56; approach to culture through language, 57; on coherence of
Zuni culture, 57; on field work as exchange, 58; seeks institutional support, 60;
failure of expedition of 1886-88, 61; view
of Fewkes' work, 65-66; and hero of Brave
New World, 66; as individualist, 67; mentioned, 9, 128
Czapli~ka, Marie, 83-84
Darwin, Charles, 75
Darwinism, 74, 75
Deacon, A. B.: and Ambrym six-class system, 175, 178; disciple of Rivers, 176-77;
difficulties with diffusion, 177; linguistic
skills, 178; fieldwork in Malekula, 178-88;
Mal.ekula, 181-82, 191-93; fieldnotes,
182-87, 192-93; difficulties with Mewun
kinship, 184-86, 188, 190; disillusion
with Rivers, 188-89; letters of, 192-93;
on altered relations of facts, 193
Decolonization, 3, 8, 112, 124, 150
De Ganay, S., 123n, 136
de Heusch, L., 123n
Dehistoricization of social anthropology, 4,
87, 93, 94, 104, 124
Delafosse, Maurice, 126-28, 143
INDEX
Derrida, Jacques, 205

Devereux, George, 138
Dewey, John, 211
Dieterlen, Germaine, 123, 123n, 136, 144,
148, 150
Diffusion, 89, 94, 104, 11 l, 176-77
Dogon (West Africa), 121-53 passim
Duckworth, W. L., 80
Durkheim, Emile, 83, 94, 201, 206
Ecole Coloniale, 126-27
Ecole des Langues Orientales, 127
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, 206
Economics, 5
Einstein, Albert, 161
Epistemology, 4, 112, 123, 209, 211, 215,
221
Eskimo. See Boas; Jenness
Ethics, 4, 124, 204
Ethnographic film, 77
Ethnographic liberalism, 142-43, 150-51,
153
Ethnographic present, 107
Ethnographic surveys, 55, 75-76, 81, 83, 88
Ethnography: authority of, 8, 71, 105, 109,
111; behavioral, 10; textual, 10, 73, 102,
105, 204; artifactual, 10, 75, 122, 131-32;
Malinowskian, 10, 128, 130-31; Boasian,
IO, 130; Cushing's poetic style, 58, 60, 66;
by correspondence, 72-73, 77, 79, 99;
separation from theory, 80, 128-29; as lit
erary artifice, 104-10; and the ironic
mode, 108, 142-44, 152; documentary,
123, 128-29, 131, 147; problem of"truth"
in, 125-26, 140-41, 146, 147, 152, 153;
shaped by post-World War nihilism, 130;
reflexivity in, 143; as initiation or dialogue, 144-46, 14 7-48, 152; as infinite
exegesis on finite symbol sets, 149; role of
precursors in, 175-76, 191-94; double task
of, 191; and literary criticism, 191-94; pro
cess of, 192; two senses of, 194. See tilio
Fieldwork; Missionaries, ethnography by
Ethnological analysis of culture, 87
Ethnology: as history and distribution of
races, 81; mentioned, 5
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 124, 129
Evolutionism: crisis in, 70, 91-92; as armchair anthropology, 71, 79, 93; and reli-
237
gion, 74; as embracive, 76; critique of, 9495, 130; mentioned, 199, 201, 223
Feminism, 4
Fewkes, J. W.: and Hemenway Southwestern
Archaeological Expedition, 61; contrast
with Cushing, 63, 67-68; relations with
Owens, 64-65; his new professionalism,
65
Field languages: learning native languages,
20, 21, 22, 34, 40, 42, 57, 73, 79, 83, 85,
89, 90, 96, 98, 162, 178, 201; use of inter
preters, 26, 73, 88, 89, 98; pidgin English,
42, 77. 79, 85, 86, 98
Field notes, reinterpretation of, l 25n, 18287, 190-94
Field sites: access to, 4; allocation of, 187
Fieldwork: as hallmark of socio-cultural anthropology, 8, 70; mythic elaboration of,
8, 70, 84, 85, 104-10, 111; training for, 8,
109; current consciousness of, 8-9, 112; in
complex societies, IO; as exchange, 58;
technological aids in, 63, 122; empathy
and rapport, 79, 81, 85, 89, 91, 100, 103,
108; by single investigator, 92, 97, 105,
112; as aggressive interrogation, 99, 13738, 142-43, 147; methodological prescriptions as post hoc rationalizations, 124-25;
as dialogue, 125, 132, 135, 152, 204; theatrical metaphor for, 132, 135, 139-40,
142, 144, 147, 153; on the model of psychoanalysis, 138; as process of instruction,
138, 139, 146, 152; as lived fiction, 144;
as disclosure of secrets, 14 7; trait lists, 158;
hypotheses in, 188, 190; and interpretation of prior texts, 191-94; as "reading,"
193. See also Ethnography; Informants; Intensive study; Questionnaires; and individual anthropologists (especially Barnett,
Cushing, Deacon, Griaule, Leenhardt,
Malinowski, Rivers)
Fiji, 83
Firth, Raymond, 176
Fison, Lorimer, 72, 73, 78, 79, 87
Folk anthropology, 5
forster, W. J., 14
Fortes, Meyer, 130
Fortune, Reo, 176
Foster, Michael, 74, 76
238
INDEX
Foucault, Michel, 205

Frazer, J. G.: ethnographic questionnaire, 7,
94; correspondence with Spencer, 79; on
separation of ethnography and theory, BO;
and Malinowski, 93-94, 100, 106, 110; as
focus of theoretical debate, 94
Freire-Marreco, Barbara, B3
French anthropology: contrasted with British
and American, 126; no distinctive fieldwork tradition, 126-31; and Surrealism,
203; two traditions in twentieth century,
206-7
Freud, Sigmund, 129, 22B
Frobenius, Leo, 126
Funding of research, 14, 5B, 60, 6B, 75, 77,
95, 97, 111, 122
Gallatin, Albert, 54
Gaitan, Francis, B6
Gardiner, Margaret, 193
Geertz, Clifford, 129, 143-44, 204
Genealogical method, B6-BB, 90, 9B, 129,
1B3, 1BB-B9
Geological Survey of Canada, B4, 212
Giese, Wilhelm, 14
Gifford, E. W., 157
Gillen, Frank, 7B-79, 102, 129
Ginsberg, Morris, B4
Goldenweiser, Alexander, 216
Government Anthropologists, BO
Grainger, Percy, 211
Griaule, Marcel: first chair in ethnology at
Sorbonne, 121; collecting for museums,
121-22; expeditions in French Sudan,
Cameroon, and Tchad, 122; focus on the
Dagon, 122; shift from historical to syn
chronic patterns, 122; on African episte
mologies, 123; from documentary to exegetical research, 123, 131, 146-47, 149;
movement from part to whole, 123, 135,
150; before and after Ogotemmeli, 123,
137, 139, 143-44, 146, 153; ethnography,
achievements and criticisms of, 123-24;
on teamwork in fieldwork, 129, 135-37;
violence of fieldwork, 132, 140-43; mapping culture as inscribed in the land, 133;
preoccupation with the visual, 133; on de
ployment of observers, 135; use of collabarateun indigenes, 137, 153; on interrogation,
137-3B, 147; his ethnographic liberalism,

142-43, 150-51, 153; esoteric knowledge
as key to cultural system, l 4B; urges respect
for African traditions, 150; his totalizing
humanism, 150; his reification of Africa rejected, 151
Griaule School, 123
Haddon, A. C.: as zoologist, 74-75, 7B;
turns to anthropology in Torres Straits, 75;
and Torres Straits Expedition, 76-77; propagandizes for "field-work," BO; and "intensive study," Bl, B3; on Rivers, B5, B6; ethnography by correspondence, 99; on
Malinowski, 110; mentioned, 94, 95, 102,
103, 176, l 7B, 191
Haggard, H. R., 104
Hale, Horatio, 72, 73
Hall, Alexander, 19
Hallowell, A. I., 3, 7
Hancock, Billy, 99, lOB
Harrington, J. P., 90
Harvard University, 179
Hemenway, Augustus, 61
Hemenway, Mary, 60, 67
Hemenway Southwestern Archaeological Ex
pedition, 60-61, 67
Historicism, 6
History and anthropology, relations between,
6
History of Anthropology: A Research Bibliography, 3
History of anthropology: anthropologists and
the, 3-4, 6-7; historians and the, 3-4, 67; subject matter of, 5-6; colonial context
of, 6; method in, 7; and history of fieldwork, 7-10, 124-25; need to defamiliarize
it, l 0-11; as history of theory, 124
History of Amhropology Newsletter, 3
Hobhouse, Leonard, B4
Hocart, A. M.: and textual ethnography, 10;
Fiji fieldwork, B3; Western Solomons fieldwork, B3; as army captain, B4
Hogbin, Lan, 176, 1B6
Hopi, 63-64
Hom Expedition to Central Australia, 7B
Hose, Charles, 77
Howitt, A. W., 7B, 79, B7
Hunt, George, 10
INDEX
Huxley, Aldous, 66
Im Thum, E., 72
Informants: as native collaborators, 10, 123,
137, 146, 148, 153, 204-5; payment of,
33, 35, 85, 89, 96, 100, 102, 103, 108;
questioning of, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91,
96, 99, 101, 102, 137-38, 147, 158; varia
tion among, 86, 91, 99, 124; cross
checking, 86, 123, 178; lying, 86, 13 7
Informants (individuals): Ahuia Ova (New
Guinea/Seligman), 95-96; George Hunt
(KwakiutVBoas), 10; Kai (Palau/Barnett),
162, 165, 166-67; Mekur (Palau/Barnett),
162-64; Ogotemmeli (Dogon/Griaule),
123, 137, 139, 143-44, 146, 148, 150,
153; Oxaitung (Eskimo/Boas), 31-39 pas
sim; Signa or Jimmy (Eskimo/Boas), 22-47
passim; To'uluwa (Trobriands/Malinowski),
100, 102
Institute d'Ethnologie, 126, 128
Institutionalization of anthropology, 4, 67, 80
Intensive study, 55, 80-81, 83, 84, 85, 89,
90, 92-93, 97, 100, 128
International African Institute, 74, 111, 122
Iroquois, 54
Jackson, Hughlings, 76
Jacobi, Abraham, 15
Jamin, Jean, 203
Jenness, Diamond: D'Entrecasteaux fieldwork, 83; Eskimo fieldwork, 84
Johnson, Samuel, 179
Journal de la Socit!re des Africanistes, 126
Journal of American Archaeology and Ethnology,

65
Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 75
Jung, Carl, 84, 228
Kant, Immanuel, 29, 173
Karsten, Rafael: Bolivian fieldwork, 83; Peru
vian fieldwork, 84
Kearn, Thomas, 55, 63
King, Charles Bird, 54-55
Kiriwina. See Trobriand Islands
Kiwai (New Guinea), 84-85
Klimek, Stanislaw, 157, 159
Krackowizer, Ernst, 15
239
Krackowizer, Marie: Boas' financtt, 15-16;

letter-diary to, 16-49; marries Boas, 51
Kroeber, A. L.: on "superorganic," 210, 221;
mentioned, 157, 159, 160, 168
Kubary, Jan, 104
Lacan, Jacques, 203
Landtman, Gunnar: Kiwai Papuan fieldwork,
83; contrasted with Malinowski, 84-85
Lang, Andrew, 91
Larcom, Joan: background in literary criti
cism, 178-79; abandons Mayan for Melanesian research, 179; at Deacon's grave,
181; and Deacon's Malekula, 181-82, 19193; on Mewun ideology of"place," 18287, 194; rejects Barthian model of cultural
change, 189-90; on recognition of prede
cessors, 191-94
layard, John: Atchin (Malekula) fieldwork,
83; mental distress, 84
LeCoeur, Charles, 131
Leenhardt, Maurice: youth, 197; preparation
for missionary career, 197; arrival in New
Caledonia, 198; dilemma of respect vs.
change, 198-99, 201; loyal opposition to
French colonialism, 199, 200; tum to eth
nography, 200-201; hermeneutic ap
proach, 201, 204-5; and cultural transla
tion, 202, 203; theory of the Melanesian
person, 203; ethnographic style, 204; and
informants, 204-5; returns to Paris, 205;
succeeds Mauss at Ecole Pratique, 206;
contrasted to Levi-Strauss, 206
L'homme noir, 123, 126, 150
Leiris, Michel: on colonialism and fieldwork,
151-52, 199-200; on intercultural transla
tion, 152-53; mentioned, 122, 123n, 131,
136, 140, 142, 206
Lettens, D., l 46n
Levi-Strauss, Claude, 109, 206
Uvy-Bruhl, Lucien, 126, 201, 205-6
Lifchitz, Debra, 122
Linguistic anthropology: Sapir's, 210, 212,
213, 214, 215, 222, 228; mentioned, 5,
76, 77, 88, 90
Literary criticism, 179, 191-94
London School of Economics, 81, 83, 84,
85, 94
Lowie, Robert, 213, 223
240
INDEX
Mabuaig Island (Torres Straits), 75, 86, 87

McDougall, William, 76, 77, 81
Magill, Emily, 58
Mailu (New Guinea), 96-97
Maine, H. S., 102n
Malekula (New Hebrides), 175-94 passim
Malinowski, Bronislaw: diary, 8-9, 98, 102,
103, 108, 112; and "niggers," 8-9, 98,
102-3, 105, 108; ethnographic style, 10,
79, 112, 130-31; as mythic hero of fieldwork, 71, 93, 107-10; and missionaries,
74, 96, 98, 103, 108; last of prewar cohort
into field, 82; professor at London School
of Economics, 85; and Frazer, 93, 94, 104,
106, 107; and Rivers, 93, 98, 100, 103-4;
and Durkheim, 94-95, 100, 101; critique
of evolutionism, 95; on historical method,
95, 104; dissatisfaction with interrogation,
96; methodological prescriptions, 96, 97,
99, 100, 102, 105, 109, 111-12; linguistic
facility, 96, 98, 112; Mailu fieldwork, 9697; Trobriand fieldwork, 97-104; and study
of native belief, 98-99; aggressive fieldwork style, 99; on cultural rule and indi
vidual behavior, 99-100; relations with
Trobrianders, 100-103; alleged racism, 102;
psychological goals, 104; ethnography as
literary anifice, 104-10; on ethnographic
authority, 105; on scientific ethnography,
105-6; and the ethnographic present, 107;
as guide to future fieldworkers, 109, 11011; on myth, 109-10, 112; mentioned,
124, 128, 129, 175, 176, 177, 204
Mana, 91
Marett, R. R.: on magico-religious facts, 9192; mentioned, 104
Marxism, 4
Masters, Edgar L., 222
Material culture, 33, 75, 84, 92
Matthews, Washington, 63-64
Mauss, Marcel: on total social facts, 128-30;
on ethnographic method, 129-31; The Gift
as an allegory of reconciliation, 130; men
tioned, 85, 121, 126, 205, 206
Mead, Margaret, 9, 208, 215, 216
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 203
Metraux, Alfred, 131
Mewun (Malekula): cultural change among,
181, 182, 186, 189, 190; gerontocracy,
182-83; kinship and ideology of"place,"
182-87, 194; persistence of culture, 190

Micronesia: anthropology and administration
in, 169-72
Mikluho-Maclay, Nikolai, 104
Mission civilairice, 150, 199
Mission Dakar-Djibouti, 121-22, 131-32,
136, 140-41, 152
Missionaries, ethnography by, 5, 55, 73-74,
92. See also under Malinowski, Bronislaw;
and individual missionaries (Byington,
Codrington, Fison, Leenhardt, Riggs, Ros
coe, Saville, E. F. Wilson)
Morgan, Lewis H., 9, 54, 56, 87
Morocco, 82, 111
Moseley, Henry, 74, 78
Murphy, Al, 161-62, 165, 168
Murray Island (Torres Straits), 77
Myers, Charles, 76, 77, 81, 89, 90
Native Americans: violence against, 53;
Cushing's view of, 61; languages, 212; in
dividual life of, 223
Native anthropologists, 4, 10, 148-49, 204-
5
Natural scientists as anthropologists, 74, 92
Negritude Movement, 124
New Caledonia, 197-202
New Guinea, 77, 81, 84, 97, 176
New Hebrides (Vanuatu), 175, 177, 178, 181
Nietzsehe, Friedrich, 130
Notes and Queries on Anthropology: Tylorian
editions, 71-72, 74, 75, 79, 90; 4th edi
tion, 89-93, 96-97, 99, 105, 111
Ogotemmeli. See under Griaule, Marcel; Informants (individuals)
Ojibwa, 73
Orientalism, 126, 216
Orwell, George, 142
Other, the non-European, 4, 200, 203
Owens, John G., 63
Oxford University: Committee on Anthro
pology, 82; mentioned, 72, 74, 76, 78, 83,
90
Palau (Micronesia), 161-69
Parsons, Elsie Clews, 215, 223
Panicipant-observation, 7, 56, 70, 97, 100102, 105, 126, 128, 131, 135, 140, 200201
INDEX
Paulme, Denise, 123n, 128, 136

Penney, William, 19
Percy Sladen Trust Expedition, 83
Perry, William, 85, 111, 176, 177
Physical anthropology, 23, 60, 78, 88, 92
Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford), 78
Post-structuralism, 196-97
Powell, John Wesley, 54-56, 67
Presence Africaine, 150

Presentism, 6
Prichard, J. C., 74
Primitive peoples: vanishing, 4; testing mental abilities, 76; Australians as "type" case,
95; textbook image of, 168; society, 223
Professionalization, 3, 64-65, 67, 128
Progress, idea of, 33, 54-55
Psychoanalysis, 138, 211, 228
Psychological anthropology, 168, 171
Psychological tests, 76, 86
Psychology: experimental, 76, 81, 85; physiological, 80; social, 81; mentioned, 5
Questionnaires, 71, 72, 73, 75, 79, 91, 94.
See also Notes and Queries on Anthropology
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.: Andaman fieldwork,
83; Western Australian fieldwork, 83; dehistoricization of social anthropology, 87,
94; theoretical influence, 111; mentioned,
128, 176, 178

Radin, Paul, 213, 215
Ray, Sydney, 76, 77, 81
Rickert, Heinrich, 221, 228
Riggs, Stephen, 54
Rivers, W. H. R.: early training, 76; Torres
Straits fieldwork, 77, 86; leading field anthropologist of his day, 81, 85, 88; Toda
fieldwork as intensive study, 81, 89; fieldwork on mission ship, 83, 88; migrationtheories, 85; concrete method, 85, 88, 94,
98, 104, 108; definition of intensive study,
85, 89-93; genealogical method, 86-88,
90; positivism of, 87, 88, 99; conversion to
diffusion, 87, 89, 94, 177, 188-89; contribution to Notes and Queries, 90, 97, 105,
111; on indivisibility of ethnographic labor, 92; on integration of culture, 92; on
specialization of ethnographer's role, 92;
influence on Malinowski, 98; death, 110;
and "Cambridge School," 175, 186; and
241
kinship, 177, 185; on gerontocracy, 183;

mentioned, 128, 129
Rivet, Paul, 122, 126
Riviere, George-Henri, 122
Rockefeller Foundation, 111, 122
Roscoe, John, 80
Rouch, Jean, 123n, 141
Russell, Bertrand, 160
Sapir, Edward: and Boasian anthropology,
208-13, 223-24; concern with pattern and
structure, 209-10, 222-23, 226; linguistics, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 222, 228;
dissatisfaction with Boasian orthodoxy,
210, 212, 213-14; on outer and inner real
ity, 210, 215, 218, 220-21, 226, 227; on
individual and culture, 210-11, 212, 219,
221, 223-24, 226-27; on unconscious pat
terning, 210-11, 222, 225, 227; divided
temperament, 211, 214-15; theory of culture, 211, 219, 222, 224-27, 229; turn
ing point in 1916, 211-12; Time Perspective
in Aboriginal American Culture, 211-12,

224, 226; fieldwork, 212; poetry, 212, 213,
216-18, 227-29; Ottawa years, 212-13;
wife's illness, 213, 216; on beauty of form,
214, 218, 219, 221-22, 225-26; inner dis
satisfaction, 214-15, 216-17; literary es
says, 216, 218-22; artistic ideas in technical writings, 223-27; on genuine and
spurious culture, 224-26; cultures as abstractions, 226; mentioned, 84
Sarawak, 77
Savages, idea of, 33, 38, 54, 56, 88, 198,
206
Saville, W. J. V., 108
Schaeffner, Andre, 122, 123n, 136
Schoolcraft, H. R., 54
Seligman, Brenda, 81
Seligman, C. G.: fieldwork, 77, 81, 95, 97,
98; fieldwork style, 82, 110; and Malinowski, 84, 94, 95, 110; Rossel Island pro
ject, 97, 100; mentioned, 76, 89, 94
Senghor, Leopold, 124
Smith, G. E., 85, Ill, 176, 177
Smithsonian Institution, 55
Social Science Research Council, 3, 111
Societe des Missions Evangeliqucs, 197, 205
Sociology, 76, 84, 129
Sontag, Susan, 109
242
INDEX
Sorbonne (University of Paris), 121

Spencer, W. B.: as zoologist, 74, 78; joins
forces with Gillen, 78; fieldwork with
Arunta, 78-79; impact of Arunta ethnog
raphy, 79, 91, 129; mentioned, 102, 129
Steinthal, Heymann, 14
Stephen, Alexander, 55, 63-64
Stirling, E. C., 78
Structuralism, 203
Surrealism, 122, 152
Survivals, 213
Swan, James G., 55
Tax, Sol, 111
Ten Kate, H. F. C., 55, 60
Tikopia, 176
Todas, 81, 89
Torres Straits Expedition, 73n, 76-77. 79,
80, 83
Totemism, 80, 94
Travellers, anthropological observation by,
72, 77. 90, lll
Trobriand Islands: Malinowski fieldwork, 97104; Saloma, 98-99; Kula, 102, 106-7,
129; mentioned, 71, 175
Trocadero Ethnographic Museum (subsequently the Musee de l'Homme), 122
Tylor, E. B.: correspondence with ethnogra
phers, 72; and B.A.A.S. questionnaires,
72-73, 79; Oxford lectures, 78; response to
Boas' critique, 91, 95; senescence, 94;
mentioned, 224
UNESCO, 150-51
Union Fran~aise, Assembly of the, 150
United States Exploring Expedition, 72

United States Geological Survey, 55
United States National Museum, 56
University College, London, 111
University of Cairo, 84
University of California, 212
University of Cracow, 93
University of Dublin, 74, 76
University of Melbourne, 74, 78
University of Pennsylvania, 212
Utilitarianism, 189-90
Vanuatu. See New Hebrides
Victoria Memorial Museum (Ottawa), 212
Virchow, Rudolf, 14
Volkskunde, 5, 10
von Neumayer, Georg, 14
Wedgwood, Camilla, 186, 191-92
Weike, Wilhelm, 14-48 passim
Westermarck, Edward: at London School of
Economics, 81, 83; fieldwork in Morocco,
81, 111; mentioned, 94
Wheeler, G. C., 83, 84
Wilkin, Anthony, 76, 77, 81
Wilson, E. F., 73-74
Wilson, Edmund, 55, 66
Wortman, Jacob, 60
Wundt, Wilhelm, 94
Yampolsky, Helene Boas, 17
Zahen, Dominique, 123n
Zuni, 55-67 passim

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George W. Stocking, Jr.

with ideologies of European self-knowledge-as the evolutionary equation of

of Boasian ethnography: the style that produced Boas' "five-foot shelf" of

"THE VALUE OF A PERSON

Douglas Cole is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University. He has

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

t'rature and honed by several contributions that he made to it during his

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

rnrlion copy made on perforated 17.5 by 8. 5 cm notepads. The original was

BoAs' BAFFIN ls LAND LETTER D1ARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

an unpleasant disruption to the making of my caribou suit as the women will

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

according to what I am told must be about 80 years old. He knew Amarox

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

December 23, Anamitung Now I am again sitting in Oxaitung's iglu

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

BoAs' BAFFIN ISLAND LETTER-DIARY

Judged in terms of Boas' original intentions, the expedition was a failure.

suits. He had made an accurate survey of most of Cumberland Sound and

BoAs' BAFFIN lsLAND LETTER-DIARY

ing that anthropological fieldwork emphasizing attention to the historical

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

ley 1981:151-55), demonstrating that while institutions reflect intentions,

Typically, Cushing here personalized history. In actuality it was Spencer Baird,

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

initial weeks in the home of the Zuni governor, Palowaihtiwa, were ex

Understanding such deeply rooted patterns, he saw, required time, patience,

The recognition of a living history at Zuni inspired in Cushing the spirit

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

,..,...~-!i".i.-lli. .....~ .....

Already Cushing had grown restive in the confines of BAE anthropology,

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

measurements of neighboring tribes (Maricopa, Yuma, Pima) and to study

Coffin's prognostications proved to be grossly inaccurate. As Cushing's

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

Ethnography!" (HCP: WM/FHC 117/91). Alexander Stephen, who sat with

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

Fewkes' new professionalism in ethnography involved turning out the very

If Owens deplored the pettiness of competitive work in the Southwest,

future use!)-is the most presumptuously insulting proposition on the part of

CUSHING AND FEWKES IN THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST

There is a certain justice that Cushing should have lived on in literature

generation experienced it, between intuitive understanding and disciplined